
Class 

Book J &$ 

Copyright If 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE SPORT OF BIRD STUDY 




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THE SPORT OF 
BIRD-STUDY 

A BOOK FOR YOUNG OR ACTIVE PEOPLE 

BY 

HERBERT KEIGHTLEY JOB 

Author of "Wild Wings" and "Among The Water-Fowl." 
Member of The American Ornithologists 9 Union, etc. 



PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS FROM 
LIFE BY THE AUTHOR 




NEW YORK 

THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY 

MCMVin 



Copyright, 1908, by 

THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved 



U8HARY otOONGnlT.33? 
lwo Copies »lecei»^i 

MAY 25 1900 

C!MSt> 4 XXC, rty. 



f 2£>3£>V4 

( COPY B/ 



TO MY SON 
GEORGE CURTISS JOB 

and all other 
Real Live American Boys 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB PAGE 

I The Appeal of the Sport ...... 1 

II Hunting Game-Birds with the Camera. (Upland Game 

Birds.) 13 

III The Robbers of the Falls, and Others. (Hawks.) . 34 

IV The Bird of Night. (Owls.) 57 

V Strange Bed-Fellows. (Cuckoos and Kingfishers.) . 77 

VI Knights of the Chisel. (Woodpeckers.) . . .87 

VII Berds with a Handicap. (Goatsuckers and Hummers.) 101 

VIII Professional Fly-Catching. (Flycatchers.) . . . 124 

IX Crow Relatives. (Crows, Jays, Blackbirds, etc.) . . 139 

X A Puzzle in Birds. (Finches, Sparrows, etc.) . . 156 

XI Our Priceless Swallows and Swifts . . . .178 

XII Four Neighbors Diverse. (Tanagers, Waxwings, Shrikes, 

Vireos.) 191 

XIII Feathered Gems. (The Warblers.) . . . .206 

XIV Thrush Cousins. (Thrashers, Wrens, Titmice, Kinglets, 

Thrushes, etc.) 230 

XV Water-Bird Waifs. (Wading and Swimming Birds.) . 251 

The Bird-House of Science of N. E. North America . 277 

A Bird Calendar ....... 280 

Index 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Broad-winged Hawk Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Dusky or Black Duck ........ 2 

Great Horned Owl incubating . . . . . . .4 

Ruffed Grouse on nest ........ 6 

Nighthawk incubating; normal pose . . . . . .8 

Northern Yellow-throat (female) about to feed young . . .10 

Woodcock on nest ......... 16 

Woodcock on nest, showing surroundings . . . . .20 

Young Woodcock ......... 20 

Wilson's Snipe .......... 22 

Bob White on nest ......... 24 

Nest and brood of Quail ........ 24 

Ruffed Grouse incubating ........ 30 

Ruffed Grouse in confinement ..... . . 30 

Broad-winged Hawk on nest ....... 42 

Young Broad-wings . . . . . . . .46 

Home life of the Red-tailed Hawk ...... 50 

Red-tailed Hawk ......... 50 

Three little Sharp-shinned Hawks . . . . . .54 

Nest of Marsh Hawk ........ 54 

Nest of Red-shouldered Hawk ....... 58 

The Cooper's Hawks' nest by the falls . . . . .58 

Young Barred Owl 62 

Great Horned Owl 62 

Young Long-eared Owl hiding ....... 66 

ix 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



Young Long-eared Owls ........ 66 

Young Screech Owl in position of defense . . . . .72 

Screech Owl 72 

"On it sat a Black-billed Cuckoo" 78 

Nest of Black-billed Cuckoo 80 

Young Black-billed Cuckoos in nest ...... 80 

Kingfisher (adult) 82 

Young Kingfisher leaying nest-burrow ...... 84 

Young Kingfishers ......... 84 

"A Flicker stuck its head out of the nest-hole" . . . .90 

Flicker, or Yellow-hammer (female), feeding young in hole . . 90 
Family of Young Flickers ........ 94 

Ned got the Hairy Woodpecker ....... 98 

Downy Woodpecker attracted by suet ...... 98 

Downy Woodpecker ......... 98 

Whippoorwill on nest . . . . . . . .106 

Young Whippoorwills in nest . . . . . . .106 

Nighthawk . . . 108 

Young Nighthawks 108 

Nighthawk on eggs, alarmed . . . . . . .110 

Nighthawk by her eggs . . . . . . . .110 

Hummer "in the midst of the feeding comedy" . . . .116 

Humming Bird incubating . . . . . . . .116 

Hummer and young ......... 120 

Young Hummers in nest . . . . . . . .120 

Kingbird on nest . . . . . . . . .124 

Kingbird scolding . . . . . . . .126 

The entire Kingbird family . . . . . . .126 

Phcebe and her new husband in the garden . . . .130 

Phcebe on nest .......... 130 

Snapshot of Wood Pewee . . . . . . . .134 

Young Least Flycatcher . . . . . . . .134 

The Alder Flycatcher ........ 136 

X 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PACING 
PAGE 



Typical nest of Alder Flycatcher 138 

Alder Flycatcher .138 

Young Crows in nest ......... 140 

Young Crows .......... 142 

Blue Jay 146 

Rusty Grackle .148 

Nest of Meadcwlark . . . . . . . . .148 

Nest of Orchard Oriole . . . . . . . .150 

Young Orchard Orioles . . . . . . . .150 

Male Bobolinks 152 

Five young Bobolinks in nest . . . . . . .152 

Tree Sparrow eating hay seed thrown on the snow . . .160 

Pine Grosbeak about to drink . . . . . . .160 

Female Rose-breasted Grosbeak incubating . . . . .162 

Pair of White-winged Crossbills . . . . . . .162 

Young Field Sparrows in nest . . . . . . .164 

Young Goldfinches, ready to leave nest . . . . .164 

Nest of Swamp Sparrow . . . . . . . .170 

Nest of Vesper Sparrow . . . . . . . .170 

Nest of Chippy 172 

Chipping Sparrows . . . . . . . . .172 

Young Barn Swallows on nest ....... 180 

Young Barn Swallow ........ 180 

Eave Swallows . . . .182 

Fledgling Eave Swallow 182 

Tree Swallow (male) and nest . . . . . . .184 

Tree Swallow 184 

Youug Tree Swallows . . . . . . .184 

Purple Martins near their nest in hole of stub .... 186 

Bank Swallow at nest — hole in gravel bank . . . . .186 

Young Chimney Swifts by their nest ...... 188 

Young Chimney Swift . 188 

Nest of Scarlet Tanager . . . . . . . .194 

xi 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



Young Cedar Waxwings . . . . . . . .194 

Red-eyed Vireo incubating ........ 202 

Red-eyed Vireo near young ....... 202 

Red-eyed Vireo feeding young Cowbirds ..... 204 

Black and White Creeping Warbler 208 

Black and White Creeping Warbler on nest ..... 208 

Nest of Black-throated Blue Warbler 218 

Nest of Yellow-breasted Chat 218 

Oven-bird on nest ......... 222 

Louisiana Water Thrush on nest ....... 222 

Redstart on nest 224 

Chestnut-sided Warbler on nest ....... 224 

Nest of Chestnut-sided Warbler 226 

The condition of the Chestnut-sided Warbler's nest two days' later . 226 
Yellow Warbler feeding young in nest ...... 228 

Northern Yellow-throat 228 

Brown Thrasher (male) and young ...... 234 

Brown Thrasher (female) 236 

Male Brown Thrasher, shielding young in nest .... 236 
Catbird in shrubbery ......... 238 

Catbird on nest 238 

House Wren entering nest ........ 240 

House Wren emerging from nest in old can ..... 240 

Short-billed Marsh Wren 242 

Nest of Short-billed Marsh Wren 242 

Chickadees ......... 244 

White-breasted Nuthatch . . . . . . . . 244 

Wood Thrush incubating ........ 250 

Young Wood Thrushers, ready to leave nest .... 250 

Spotted Sandpiper scolding ....... 254 

Semi-palmated Sandpiper feeding ...... 254 

Nest of Sora 258 

Young American Bitterns ....... . 258 

xii 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



Young Least Bittern 260 

Green Heron and nest ........ 262 

Green Heron incubating ........ 262 

Young Wood Duck 266 

The Horned Grebe ashore ........ 270 

Red-breasted Merganser ........ 272 

The Horned Grebe 272 



Xlll 



THE SPORT OF BIRD STUDY 



THE SPORT OF BIRD STUDY 

CHAPTER I 

THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

I'VE got the Wood Duck, I've got the Wood Duck, 
I've got him, I've got him!" This excited 
yelling brought me through the thicket in a 
hurry, out to the margin of the boggy pond. I arrived 
just in time to see my fifteen-year-old enthusiast caper- 
ing like a jumping- jack, and catch a glimpse of a flying 
duck disappearing like a meteor. 

"Got him, have you?" I said. "Produce him, then! 
Spread him out and let's look him over. Then we'll 
have roast duck!" 

"He's just gone out there through those trees," cried 
Ned, indicating the course of the recent meteorite, "and 
I'm dead sure it's a Wood Duck, positive ! That makes 
number 149 on my year's list, and I know there's a 
brood of Black Ducks in here, too; I heard one quack- 
ing. If I see them, that will make 150. Oh, it just 
makes me crazy!" 

"Yes, that was a Wood Duck all right. I saw it go," 
I replied, "and you've certainly got him to your credit, 

1 



THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

but you mustn't get so excited this hot August weather, 
or you'll have a sunstroke." 

"Hang the sunstroke," exclaimed Ned, "I'm awful 
glad you brought me in here. You said I'd get the 
Wood Duck, but I'd tried so many times I was afraid 
I'd miss it again. This is certainly a dandy place, and 
I'm coming here every day for awhile. But when is 
the best time of day for ducks? I want to see the 
whole flock of Wood Ducks, and of course the Black 
Ducks, though I saw some of those fellows last year." 

"You would be liable to start them up at any time, 
while they are resting and sunning themselves in the 
swamp," I told him, "but at dusk they begin to fly 
around to feed, and dawn is another good time, too. 
But it would be hard for you to get here so early, and 
the grass would be drenching wet." 

"Hard!" he cried. "You're a great man to talk so, 
for I've heard you tell of your getting up at two and 
driving twenty miles before light to shoot ducks in the 
fall. Don't you think I've got some sporting blood as 
well as yourself, even if I don't murder them the way 
you used to?" 

"Well, now, you're getting on to a rather delicate 
subject," I replied. "I know you're an early bird, and 
I'm glad you are an enthusiast, and that we both know 
how to find more fun with the birds than by killing 
them. Of course there's nothing wrong in shooting 
lawful game in moderation, but it's simply this, that 
the new way is so much better than the old that we 



THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

don't care for shooting. Gunners can hunt only in the 
fall, but our hunting lasts the whole year. Their 
game, too, is limited to a few kinds, while we have 
every sort of bird that flies." 

So we talked along till we came to the village, agreeing 
to go to the pond next day at dusk and try to "get" the 
Black Duck. 

While Ned is gone, it is a good chance to talk behind 
his back and tell a little about him. 

A great many people nowadays are interested in 
birds, and many schools have taken it up as a study 
and recreation combined. This is the case in the school 
which Ned attends. They have colored pictures of 
native birds pinned up on the walls, and charts which 
explain in an easy way the classification of birds, the 
groups into which they are divided, and which kinds, 
or species, of birds are likely to be found in that locality, 
and at what seasons. The teachers take parties of 
their pupils out on excursions or "bird walks," noticing 
the flowers and trees as well, or any other interesting 
objects, and grand good times they have. Several 
members of a party have field or opera glasses to see 
the shier birds more plainly, and so tell what they are. 
These boys or girls soon come to recognize all the com- 
mon birds about as far off as they can see them, and are 
able to give them their right names. At school they 
keep a list of the birds seen and identified during the 
year, and each scholar is given credit for the ones he is 
the first to find, so that competition becomes very keen. 

3 



THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

One day I went out to the athletic field to see the 
boys play a game of baseball. It was the fifth of May, 
and just across the road which bordered the field I saw 
and heard two male Bobolinks, the first arrivals in 
that locality. I wondered whether the boys would 
notice them, but they did, and after the game there 
was a grand race to report the Bobolink for the list. 

Out of school hours some of the boys, on their own 
hook, scour the fields and woods for miles around, and 
Ned is one of these. Young as he is, he has already 
come to know the birds wonderfully well, and he seldom 
meets one he cannot recognize, if only he has a good 
glance at it. There is keen rivalry among these boys 
as to who can see and identify the largest number of 
kinds of birds each year. This sends them actively 
scouring around outdoors in all sorts of places, and at 
all times, too, winter as well as summer. It is splendid 
exercise, especially the climbing of the steep wooded 
hills, up over the rocks, scrambling through thickets of 
mountain laurel. There is genuine sport in this in 
itself, yet an incentive, such as an old Hoot Owl some- 
where in those wild, secluded woods up near the sum- 
mit, makes it doubly exciting. There are plenty of 
Ruffed Grouse in these fastnesses which can be pur- 
sued, either with the gun in the fall, or without the gun 
at any time — to find their nests, to watch the mother 
lead her brood, to learn where they stay at different 
hours of the day, where they go when flushed, how 
many times one can put up the same bird, and so on. 

4 




Great Horned Owl incubating. "An incentive such as an old Hoot Owl" (p. 4). 



THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

The wild places also contain birds which are rare, or 
not so well known, and there is always a feeling of 
expectancy and excitement, because at any moment 
something may turn up. This is particularly true of 
the seasons of migration, in spring and fall. Spring is 
inspiring, with its soft breezes and opening flowers, the 
fragrant odors of earth and woods, the procession of 
the birds in their choicest plumages, full of song and 
joy. Autumn is energizing with its snappy air, bidding 
one be active, the falling of the nuts, the whirring flight 
of game birds, the restless activity of passing migrant 
hordes whose song is now dissolved into motion. As 
the leaves shower down, how fine it is to see through 
the woods again, and to get the grand views from the 
hillsides. 

Best of all, perhaps, is the nesting season. Ned does 
not collect eggs, because there are museums available, 
and there is nothing worth while to be learned from 
the mere possession of eggshells of his own. Indeed, 
he is a member of the Audubon Society, whose motto 
is "A bird in the bush is worth two in the hand," 
and prefers to have plenty of birds to see and enjoy 
rather than to join in the robbing and killing which is 
stripping this country of its beautiful wild life. In 
nesting time the birds are more familiar and intimate. 
Find a nest, and one can then visit the bird at will, 
watch the pretty creatures at close range, learn their 
habits, how the young are fed and cared for, and also 
secure photographs from life. Besides, one learns the 

5 



THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

haunts of the various birds, the times each season when 
the different species breed, how they build their nests, 
and any number of other interesting things. 

The boys, however, do not have this fun all to them- 
selves. It appeals just exactly as much to strong, 
active men. I began when I was a young boy, and 
now, after thirty years of the sport, I like it just as well 
as ever. And there are thousands, increasing thou- 
sands, of men who have the same feeling. The sport 
has in it the elements of adventure and activity, just 
the thing to alternate with the strain and confinement 
of professional or business life, a means of health and 
strength, of keeping enthusiasm and youthful freshness. 
Of course any outdoor sport is useful in this direction, 
yet the quest of the study of Nature, in some of its 
departments, has special advantages for providing 
refreshing resource for the mind, as well as for the 
body. Bird study has a peculiar inducement in that 
it is seasonable the year round, and deals with living 
subjects, which are beautiful and of special fascination 
because of their power of flight. The gunner and the 
fisherman at the close of their short season — all too 
brief it seems — put away their implements of the chase 
with regret, for it will be many long months before it 
will be time again to start out. But the ornithologist 
may go whenever his time permits, when the longing 
for the wild floods his soul. 

If there were any question of the right of bird study 
to rank as a sport, and a leading one at that, a certain 

6 




w 



frJL* 



THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

discovery, made not many years ago, banishes all pos- 
sible doubt. This was the discovery that photography 
could be employed in bird study with splendid suc- 
cess. At once this gave to the bird student a weapon, 
an implement, putting him in the class of sportsmen. 
Nearly everyone now knows about this new thing 
which is, indeed, a sport by itself, "hunting with the 
camera/' This is not confined to any one department 
of natural history, but is the capture upon a photo- 
graphic plate of the image of any wild living creature — 
mammal, bird, fish, or even insect. Birds offer special 
inducements for this pursuit, as they are far more 
numerous than the wild mammals. Moreover, fish 
can seldom be photographed save in captivity, and 
insects are small and not popular. 

Studying bird and animal life with the camera cer- 
tainly is a splendid sport. It destroys no life, yet yields 
results far superior to those of gun and flesh-pot in our 
stage of civilization where we need not shoot to eat. 
How often nowadays one reads the admission of some 
hunter who comes close upon some fine game, that he 
wished he had had a camera instead of his gun. To 
shoot successfully with the camera requires far more 
skill, nerve, patience, brain-power, than with the gun, 
and yet is not hard enough to be impracticable. In 
the highest essentials of sport, to my mind, the camera 
stands far ahead of the gun. 

My boy friend, of course, has caught the fever, and 
has a lightly-built long-focus camera, using a 4x5 inch 

7 



THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

plate, the very thing to begin with. I have one much 
like his except that mine has rather longer bellows, so 
as to allow the use of the single members of the doublet 
lens, and a larger size of lens at that, one intended for 
the next larger size of camera. This gives a larger 
image of a bird at a given distance, and is very useful 
with shy birds, or when one has to climb and photo- 
graph from tree to tree, or from branch to branch, and 
cannot get as near as is desirable to one's subject. 
Later Ned will probably get one like mine, and, if he 
succeeds well enough to warrant the outlay, a reflecting 
camera for photographing birds on the wing. These 
are costly and require a rapid and expensive lens. 
A 4x5 size, long-focus, is best for the purposes of most 
people, though a 5x7, if not of too heavy a make, has 
longer bellows, and admits of a larger lens. 

This sport of bird study can be fitted to any person 
and any need. Pursued to the full it means adventure 
on land and water, hardihood, climbing trees or cliffs, 
danger, travel and exploration to the remotest parts of 
the earth, if one wish. But it can be limited to ac- 
cessible local birds, the smaller birds of garden or field, 
in which even an invalid can take a world of comfort. 
A multitude of girls and women in these days are de- 
voted to it. Though they do not usually venture, for 
instance, upon climbing lofty trees to inspect hawks' 
nests, like their brothers, many of them have done fine 
work and made valuable contributions to science. The 
girls in the high school, not far from the one which Ned 

8 









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3 



THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

attends, carry on a keen rivalry with the boys in this 
bird study sport, and not infrequently bear off the 
laurels, as in getting the first record of the season of 
some species, or some new one for the list, or in the 
prize photographic competitions in the magazines for 
the best pictures of wild birds or animals from life. So 
there is room in the sport for all, and whole families, 
parents and children, may all be bird-study sportsmen ! 

In writing this book I have in my heart a very 
warm place for the boys and young men who live in 
the country. Some think that life in the country is 
dull, and long to get upon city pavements. But if I 
can get them to catch my spirit, they will change their 
minds, and country life will take on new interest and 
joy. Though I was born and brought up in the city, 
the country was where I wanted to be. On every 
Saturday holiday, and on many an afternoon after 
school, I might have been seen making tracks for 
woods or waters. During spring and Christmas vaca- 
tions I would take the train for Cape Cod. I never can 
get over the peculiar thrill which I felt whenever I 
crossed the boundary of a "Cape" town and felt that I 
was actually on Cape Cod. Somehow it seemed like 
sacred ground, a land of bliss unspeakable. I was 
under a spell of excitement, of exhilaration. It was 
country, bird country — "God's country," as they say 
out West. 

A country town appeals to me as a sort of gold mine. 
Those wooded hills are treasure houses, these swamps 

9 



THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

are more luscious than marsh mallows, those fields 
produce harvests of rarities. I am eager to start forth 
and ramble on, to seize and conquer this rich province 
with mind and eye, to make it mine. Nothing do I 
care to own it, as other men do, and pay taxes, if they 
will but tolerate my roamings, letting me visit, watch, 
study, photograph its glorious wild citizens. Really I 
pity the person who cannot enjoy the country, who has 
so few resources of mind as to need to be amused by 
the passing throng, who must forever get, in order to be 
happy, and has little or nothing to give. 

I want to start out many healthy boys, girls and 
youth on this enticing combination of sport and study 
to enlarge their lives, and make them happier and more 
contented with their lot in life. So I shall try, with the 
help of my lively young enthusiast and companion, to 
show that ornithology, or bird study, can be made a 
live thing, a sport, a fine pursuit for any active person, 
as it has surely proved to be for a growing boy like Ned. 
Sometimes, to inspire and educate him, I take him off 
with me to some wild and distant region, to camp out 
and rough it, and develop his manliness and self- 
reliance. I shall proceed to tell what he and I, or I 
alone, find in quest of birds in an ordinary inland 
country town, not a remarkable one, but an average 
one, any country town, indeed, in the Eastern or Middle 
United States, just such a town, very likely, as the one 
in which you, Reader, dwell, or spend your vacation. 
I shall try to tell, in the main, what birds you will be 

10 



THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

likely to find in such a town, how we found them, and 
what fun we had in doing so. You had better have a 
complete text-book with descriptions of birds and keys 
to identify them, such as Chapman's, or Hoffmann's 
Handbook, and also a field or opera glass, the more 
powerful the better. Later you can buy a camera, if 
the sport appeals to you. 

Most of the birds here told about are found also in 
other parts of the country and in Canada, and the 
general idea of the book will apply as well there, for 
the sport of bird study is not limited to any narrow 
boundaries. 

It is a good idea for all who study birds to know 
something of their classification, the principal groups 
and families into which bird species are divided. There 
are not so very many of these, and they are very distinct 
one from another, and one can easily carry the whole 
scheme in mind. In coming upon an unfamiliar 
specimen, it is pleasant to be able, from its general 
appearance or habits, to recognize at once to what 
family it belongs. All there is to do, then, is to take 
the Handbook and find which of several species it is. 
Most of them, indeed, one will probably know already — 
the thrushes, warblers, swallows, finches, woodpeckers, 
hawks, grouse, gulls, and so on. In the chapters fol- 
lowing I tell about the different groups of birds in their 
order of classification, except that the swimming and 
wading birds are transferred, for convenience, from 
first to last. It will be a good idea to learn the scheme 

11 



THE APPEAL OF THE SPORT 

of classification, which is given elsewhere in this book, 
and then, when afield, see what pleasure it gives to be 
able to instantly assign each bird as it appears to its 
proper family apartment in the big bird-house of 
Science. One feels that he has a grasp upon the sub- 
ject and knows just about what to expect. Ned is 
already an expert in this. 

But now here he comes running back to remind me 
that I forgot to return his precious jack-knife, so we 
must stop talking about him. 



12 



CHAPTER II 

HUNTING GAME BIRDS WITH THE CAMERA 

(Upland Game Birds) 

ALL the fall the gunners were at it. The weather 
A\ was mostly fine, and the guns seemed to be 
barking in all directions nearly every day. 
Birds were plenty, tempting some hunters to kill more 
than the law allowed, and the game warden caught 
some of them red-handed. It certainly seemed as if 
there would be no birds left by the time that the law 
went on again, the first of December. 

So I was pleased enough, during my winter rambles, 
to flush good numbers of the Ruffed Grouse on the 
woody hillsides and in the swampy woods, and, when 
the first mild days of early March arrived, to find that 
there had returned to their old haunts in the alder 
swamps quite a number of the Woodcock, generally 
recognized as the king of the game birds. With the 
coming of freezing weather the Woodcock had left us 
for a milder climate, where things were made warm for 
them by gunners all winter long. It was a wonder 
that any of them had lived to come back. 

Game birds are ranked by sportsmen not so much 
by their size as by the degree in which they "lie to the 

13 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

dog." The Ruffed Grouse is all too apt to run away 
as the hunting dog approaches, and flush from a dis- 
tance. The Wilson's Snipe of the meadows lies closely 
enough some days, but on others sneaks off, and flies 
wildly to safety. The Bob-white, or Quail, is a fine 
bird to hunt with the dog. Sometimes I have had 
almost to kick them up before they would fly. But the 
closest squatter of them all is Sir Woodcock, and he is 
king without a rival, with our friend Bob White, Es- 
quire, as a close second. These are the four real game 
birds of eastern districts and the subjects of this chap- 
ter. We shall see what sort of game they make for 
hunting with the camera. 

In this hunting, as well as in the other, Woodcock is 
king. Though he does not seem to be particularly a 
proud bird, yet he does have great confidence in himself, 
in his ability to escape the prying eyes of enemies, and 
rightly so, for his colors and markings are so closely 
like those of his surroundings in the woods and swamps 
that he can defy most eyes to detect him. Naturalists 
call this " protective coloration," and a splendid pro- 
tection it is. So the Woodcock learns that all he has to 
do, ordinarily, to be safe, is just to keep still, and well 
has he learned the lesson. 

One April day Ned and I were following along a 
brook which flows through a pasture and is fringed with 
alders. "Hullo," said I, "I wonder what sort of a 
last year's nest that is on that low bush over there!" 
So I went over to see, and stooping over to examine it, 

14 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

with my face not more than a yard from the ground, 
something happened so suddenly that I almost fell over 
backwards. A Woodcock flushed from right under- 
neath my nose and almost hit me in the face. I gave 
an exclamation of surprise, and of joy too, for surely 
this must be the nest. Ned saw the bird go off twitter- 
ing and alight in the swamp beyond. He hurried up 
to see the eggs, for it was nesting time, and we were 
hunting for Woodcocks' nests. No! I could hardly 
credit my senses. No nest there, and the bird so 
tame? But it was even so. More disappointed hunters 
it would be hard to find. The other bird of the pair, 
meanwhile, had been lying close, not ten yards away, 
and in our search for the nest we finally flushed it too, 
though we did not get quite so near. 

There were various other alder swamps in the 
neighborhood, where Woodcock had been seen, and 
one day I induced a resident hunter, who was Wood- 
cock-wise, to bring his dog for a tramp with me, to try 
to find a nest. The dog did not lead us to anything, 
but his owner happened to see some eggshells lying on 
the ground, the remains of three Woodcock's eggs 
which had been eaten by some animal, for the prints 
of sharp teeth w T ere in the shells. The place was a 
bushy tract at the edge of a meadow, and the nest was 
a small hollow on a grassy hummock beside a low alder. 

But back along the same brook where we flushed the 
birds someone else had better luck. A young man 
came in to cut alders for bean poles. After chopping 

15 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

nearly an hour near one place, all of a sudden a brown 
bird darted up from almost beneath his feet, and there 
lay four handsome drab eggs, spotted with lilac. I had 
advertised a reward for a Woodcock's nest, so early the 
next morning the youth came and told me, and I went 
with him immediately in a fever of excitement, for in 
all my travels I had never yet found a Woodcock's nest. 

The alders grew in clumps about twenty feet high in 
the part of the swamp to which my guide took me. 
Presently he stopped to look. "She's on the nest," he 
said. "Don't show me," I exclaimed, "let me make 
her out." I had to look very sharply, but quite soon I 
spied her, about fifteen yards away. It was a wonderful 
protective blending of colors. The varying shades of 
rather bright browns and yellows of the dead leaves 
almost perfectly corresponded with the browns in the 
plumage of the bird. 

The spot she had chosen was on the mound around 
the base of one of the innumerable clumps of alders. 
There lay the bird among the dead leaves, without any 
protection of undergrowth, right out boldly in the open, 
relying solely upon the blending of her color and form 
with the surroundings. Then I approached nearer, 
more cautiously than I needed to have done, for I could 
hardly bring myself to believe that she would sit there 
if a man came striding up close to her, so plainly was 
she now visible to me. Yet she stirred not ; her large, 
soft, brown eyes, the most conspicuous part of her, did 
not move or wink. 

16 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

Taking from my pocket a crisp two-dollar bill, I 
bestowed it upon the modest youth, who hardly thought 
that he could rightfully earn so easily a day's wages. 
Then he departed, leaving me alone with the bird. 
The day was April 18th, one of the last cold days of a 
vigorous and hard-dying winter. With the mercury 
below forty degrees, dark and cloudy, a cold wind 
raging, and occasional snow squalls, it might not seem 
a very favorable time for photographing birds. But I 
dared not wait. By to-morrow she might easily have 
hatched and led away her nimble young. To-night a 
wildcat, fox, raccoon, or skunk might discover her and 
end my hopes and plans. So I went right to work. 
Dark as it was, there was time enough for exposures, 
for this bird would keep as still as the towering hills 
before me. 

Setting up the camera on the tripod, I went to work 
taking pictures of her, at first from a little distance, so 
as to make sure of some result, in case she should fly, 
but presently as near as anyone could wish, the lens 
being within a yard of her. During the two hours I 
was at it, the only motion she made was to wink once 
when a pellet of sleet struck her on her unprotected 
eyeball. 

By this time I had taken nine pictures, from different 
positions, and I might have continued all day, had not 
my foot cracked a dry twig close to her head. This was 
too much even for her steady nerves, and away she 
darted, not fluttering off as though wounded, like the 

17 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

Wilson's Snipe when flushed from the nest, but with 
quick, direct flight. 

This gave me a chance to examine and photograph 
the eggs which lay in a simple hollow in the dead leaves. 
Then I withdrew to a distance and hid behind a bush 
to watch for her return. Just then it began to snow 
hard, and soon the ground was white, though the 
crystals melted on the warm eggs. Fearing that my 
presence might be keeping her away, I went off and 
explored a neighboring wooded hill, where I found a 
hawk's nest. The Woodcock had not returned in one 
hour, nor in two, but at the end of four hours she was 
brooding again, as tame as ever. 

Of course at an early opportunity I had to bring Ned 
to see the wonderful sight. After taking some more 
pictures, we sat on a rock only six feet away to eat our 
lunch, watching with keen interest the fearless and 
motionless little mother. Never had we seen a bird 
lie so splendidly to dog, man, camera, or anything else. 
To our minds the title royal was fairly earned, and 
Woodcock was certainly king. 

We had, however, one final and severe test for her — 
to try to make her stand up to be photographed. After 
getting the camera aimed and focused, and being all 
ready, with one hand I presented to her the end of a 
short stick. She did not move when it touched her, 
nor even when I pried her up off the eggs and finally 
pushed her over on to one side. She would not stand 
up for me, but at last, crouching as low as possible, she 

18 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

gave a sudden spring and went up like a glass ball from 
a trap. Even if I had tried to make the exposure, I 
know that I should have been far too slow. I have no 
doubt but that we could have handled her, had we tried 
to do so. Then I set the camera, attached a thread to 
the shutter, and hid behind a bush at a distance, to get 
a picture of her as she came back, meanwhile letting 
Ned go home. There I sat with eyes glued to that spot 
in the leaves for four mortal hours. The bird did not 
appear, the sun went down, and I had to give it up. 

Of course the eggs would be chilled and spoiled, and 
I wondered how long she would sit on them. I made a 
few more calls on Madam, and then neglected her 
until the second day of May. Four neatly split shells 
lay in the nest. The hardy eggs had hatched after all, 
and four little Woodcocks were somewhere following 
their devoted mother and learning to bore for worms 
along the soft margin of the brook. 

That same year, late in July, one of my other boy 
friends caught a young Woodcock as he returned from 
fishing and was walking along the railroad track. The 
bird flew up from the road-bed and alighted in the 
grass, where it hid and allowed him to catch it. It was 
fully fledged, but not yet very strong on the wing. 
Ned and I kept it for a month, and had very interesting 
times with it. We kept it in a wire chicken run, and 
fed to it as many as 175 earth worms a day. It soon 
got so that it would run up and take worms from our 
hands, and sometimes it would even try to swallow my 

19 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

finger, mistaking it for a nice fat worm. It would 
grasp a worm with the end of its long bill, using the 
tip of the upper mandible independently of the rest of 
the bill, like a thumb, and then gulp the worm down. 
Most of the worms were put in a pan of moist earth, 
through which they burrowed to the bottom. This 
was at night, and in the morning we would find the 
earth completely perforated with round holes where 
the bird had bored for its game. It was seldom that 
a single worm could long escape. 

Sometimes I would take the bird out for exercise and 
picture-making, tying a thread to its leg to prevent it 
from flying away. It would run about the lawn erecting 
its pretty tail, which it spread out pompously after the 
manner of a turkey cock. In like manner it would 
drink or dabble along the margin of the river, and it 
was a sight to watch it bore for worms in the soft mud 
of the sink drain. Finally after a month's captivity, I 
let it go, and the last I saw of it, it was trotting off under 
the bushes on the river's brink. We all thought every- 
thing of " Woodie," whose only fault, according to Ned, 
was its enormous appetite, that fairly tired him out 
digging worms to appease it. 

But he had a harder task yet in store. Time flew 
along, like the birds, and it was April again. One day 
a young man brought me an adult Woodcock, which he 
had caught by the roadside. It had hurt its wing 
against a telegraph wire and could no longer fly. It 
could eat, however, and we soon found that it was no 

20 




Woodcock on nest, showing surroundings. "Don't show me 
make her out" (p. 16). 



let me 




Young Woodcock. "Erecting its pretty tail'' (p. 20). 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

play to dig worms for it so early in the season — a cold, 
backward spring, too. Ned had not much time after 
school, and I was busy. One day I dug for over an 
hour and did not find worms enough for half a day's 
rations. Later in the day, as I passed a store in the 
town, I saw a boy standing idle, and an idea came to 
me. "Don't you want to earn some money?" I asked 
him. "Yes, sir," he replied. "All right," said I, "if 
you will dig me some worms for my pet Woodcock I'll 
give you ten cents a pound for them." That night he 
brought a tomato can full and said he would get more. 
The news spread rapidly among the boys that a sort of 
gold mine had been discovered. There was a regular 
procession of boys with worms, and I was kept busy 
weighing worms and finding change for my "worm 
brigade," as I called them. 

None were wasted, for the Woodcock was a marvel- 
ous eater. When it first came it weighed five ounces. 
Hearty eating soon brought it up to six and one-half, 
and then it dropped to a good full six, where it remained 
for months, until it was drowned one night in a terrific 
thunder shower. I weighed the food carefully, and 
found that it averaged about ten ounces of worms every 
twenty-four hours. Seldom did it eat less than eight 
ounces, often eleven, and once, when I weighed the 
food, it disposed of an even twelve, twice its own weight. 
"Ned," I said, "how much do you weigh?" "A hun- 
dred and ten," he replied. 

" Well, if you were as big an eater as the Woodcock, 

21 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

it would take about two hundred pounds of meat a day 
to keep you. Do you suppose your father would sup- 
port you and send you to college if you ate forty dollars' 
worth of meat a day?" Ned thought that his fond 
Papa would have to send him to work instead of to 
college, so it is well that his appetite is not quite so 
tremendous. 

The game bird which is the nearest relative of the 
Woodcock is the Wilson's Snipe. Not many people 
except sportsmen know it at all, but the trouble is that 
a good many are as afraid as cats of getting their feet 
wet. But it never in the world will hurt a healthy per- 
son, if one only keeps warm by exercising and takes off 
the wet things before sitting down. Often I have 
walked home through the town with the water squeaking 
in my boots like a suction pump, but I never caught 
cold that way. But with long rubber boots, unless we 
fall into some bog hole, we can probably keep dry, and 
vigorous tramping in boggy meadows in April or early 
May, or in September or October, can probably add 
the Snipe to our acquaintance and our bird list. We 
shall see its rapid, irregular flight, and hear its curious 
note — "escape," it seems to say, which it proceeds to 
do admirably, unless the intruder be a gunner and a 
good shot besides! Often have I chuckled to see the 
would-be snipe shooter's bang-bang, miss-miss! 

The bird goes mostly north of the United States to 
breed, though a few do so along the northern border. 
I have found just one nest in my life thus far, up in the 

22 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

Magdalen Islands, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The 
male seems to give warning to his brooding mate when 
an intruder approaches the nest, and the pair dart 
around very swiftly up in the air, making a humming 
with their wings and sharp scolding notes. One of my 
bright-eyed young friends hid and watched a female 
until she alighted near her nest, which he then found, 
and we all had chances to see her go fluttering up as 
though desperately wounded. She was very tame in 
returning, and by setting the camera on the ground, 
focused on the nest, and pulling the thread, I secured 
several good pictures of her in the act of brooding her 
four dark mottled eggs. 

Previous to the severe winter of 1903-4, Bob-white 
was an abundant bird in our locality. Sitting on my 
piazza, I could hear ringing calls issuing from the out- 
lying clover fields, as the proud little roosters challenged 
one another from their observatories on stone wall or 
rail fence. Sometimes, especially when driving, I have 
passed quite close to our noisy little friend on the fence, 
but he is off in a hurry, if one stops to look at him. In 
the autumn I have followed up coveys to see what they 
would do. Once, in September, I saw a number of 
them on a stone wall. They flew down as I drove by, 
into some bushes close at hand, and I hitched the horse 
and went after them. Standing on the wall, I studied 
over the ground under the bushes very carefully, but 
could not make out a single bird. But when I tossed 
in a big stone, up they all went like rockets, nearly 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

twenty of them, right from the very place I had so 
carefully examined. 

How well protected they are by their colors I once 
had a fine chance to see. A single bird flushed before 
the hunting dogs, and took to a patch of scrub pines. 
I went in to look for it, and, as I was standing where 
the shade was dense, but the ground clear of under- 
growth, I happened to see it lying flat on the ground on 
the smooth carpet of pine needles only two or three 
steps from me. Before I had time to get my camera 
ready it realized that it was discovered and flew off. 
So I got no picture, and, indeed, had never shot quail 
with the camera. But opportunities came, at length. 
Mrs. Robert White, like the old woman of shoe-resi- 
dence fame, usually has a great many children. She 
raises a big batch of them in June, and then often tries 
it again in July and August. She is apt to nest in hay 
fields, and the mowing-machine discovers this second 
nesting. So one day, late in July, a farmer told me 
that he had found a nest. Sure enough, in the corner 
of his field by the stone wall was a nest with sixteen 
eggs, in a clump of grass which the kind man had left 
to protect them. It was easy enough to photograph 
the eggs, but the mother bird was afraid of the camera, 
so I had to take it away without getting her picture. I 
made another visit very soon with Ned, and was just 
in the nick of time, for fourteen of the sixteen eggs had 
hatched, and the cunning little things which looked for 
all the world like little brown-leghorn chickens, only 

24 




M 

Bob- White on nest. "Could stroke her on the back" (p. 25). 




Nest and brood of Quail. "Like little brown leghorn chickens" (p. 24). 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

about half their size, were all in the nest, just dried off 
ready to leave, as they always do very shortly after 
hatching. The mother was brooding them, and she 
fluttered off, while the young scrambled out of the nest 
in an instant and hid in the grass. Between us both we 
managed to find ten, which we put back in the nest, 
where I photographed them and the egg shells. Each 
one of the eggs had the larger end neatly split off to let 
out the chick. The membrane held the piece like a 
lid, and in most cases it had shut down again so neatly 
that one would hardly notice but that the eggs were 
round and full as ever of young quail. As soon as I 
went away the anxious mother, who had been whining 
at us from the wall, sneaked back to her chicks and 
doubtless led them away at once. It was disappointing 
that it was a dark showery day, so that I could not try 
for a snapshot at the family as they left their happy 
home for the wide, wide world. 

"My, but wasn't it great luck!" About a week later 
another farmer mowed by a nest and found it. This 
one was not half a mile from the other, right beside a 
much-traveled road, under the end of a pile of fence 
rails. This bird was very different in disposition from 
the other. She was so tame that Ned and I could 
stroke her on the back without making her leave her 
eggs, so accustomed had she become to seeing people, 
who were constantly passing so near that they surely 
would have stepped on her, had it not been for the 
protecting rails. She was in plain sight now, without 

25 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

the long grass, and yet no one else discovered her. I 
set up the camera as near as I could wish, and photo- 
graphed her without the least trouble. Then Ned 
poked her off the nest. I got her picture as she was 
leaving, out in the grass, where he "shooed" her to 
make her stand still, before she flew. Having to drive 
past on the following day in the evening, I stopped 
my buggy within a yard of her and watched her awhile. 
As usual, she never moved or winked. The next day 
eleven split shells told the story of the birth of eleven 
little Bobby- whites to roam the grain fields and pastures 
of their beautiful valley. 

I had now secured photographs from wild life of 
three of the four important game birds, and was eager 
now to conquer the remaining one, the Ruffed Grouse. 
In past years I had often found their nests. A favorite 
location is in a pine grove, under some little bush or 
sprout. One day, some ten years before this, I had 
found two in one tract of pines, within half an hour. 
Another favorable place is swampy woods, beside a 
fallen log or underbrush, as well as in drier woodland. 
Confident of success, through past experience, the fol- 
lowing spring, in May, I began the hunt for a nest in 
woods where the birds were common. It is largely a 
matter of chance — though of persistence, too — to walk 
close to the brooding bird, practically invisible by her 
protective coloration, and flush her from her eggs. 
What a tremendous whirring she makes as she leaves! 

Somehow luck was plainly against me at the first. 

26 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

Day after day I had ranged the woods for miles and 
miles, but I did not happen upon just the right spot. 
But at length, while I was thus hunting, I met a man 
burning brush, who told me of an Indian hunter who 
recently, while guiding a surveying party, had found 
two " Partridge " nests. That evening I saw the Indian, 
and arranged to have him show me his finds. 

Two days later, in the morning, we started up a trail 
over a very mountainous tract. For nearly two miles 
it followed a rocky ravine by a roaring brook. A 
rattlesnake sprung his wavering alarm, but I was too 
eager in the quest to care that day for snake trophies. 
Three miles back from the road we reached the neigh- 
borhood of the nests. One was in a swampy hollow 
along the line of the surveyors' blazings, beside a stump. 
We finally found it, after quite a search, but some wild 
animal had eaten the eggs and the shells were scattered 
about. The other was a little further on, beside the 
trail we had been following. The bird was on the 
nest, directly at the base of a clump of chestnut sprouts. 
Despite her solitude, or else because of it, she was one 
of the wary sort and ran off, trailing her wings, before 
I could get with the camera within fifteen feet of her. 
She had twelve eggs. 

Leaving the vicinity for a time, when I returned she 
was not on, though the eggs were warm. Then I hid 
and watched. In half an hour she came walking back, 
with head erect, jerking her tail. After waiting a 
quarter of an hour for her to get composed, again I 

rt 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

tried to approach, but she ran the instant she saw me 
coming. Evidently this method was hopeless, so I 
rigged the camera up in some bushes in front of the 
nest, covering it with leaves. Then came a tedious 
wait in hiding, with thread attached to the shutter, but 
no sign of the bird. So I extended my line of thread 
away off in the woods, went off for an hour, and then 
pulled at a venture. This time the bird was at home, 
having become used to the camera. It was now late 
afternoon, so I had to return home, after fixing an 
imitation of the camera to keep the bird accustomed to 
the instrument. The plate proved to be hopelessly 
under-exposed, though the exposure was for one sec- 
ond, with full aperture, but with a single lens of the 
doublet. 

The next two days brought pouring rain, but I tried 
it again on Memorial Day, arising at 4 a. m., as I had 
to be back at noon for public exercises. The bird 
skulked off again, so I set the camera as before, but 
she had not returned in over three hours. It was then 
eleven o'clock. I left the camera set, ran the three 
miles down the trail in twenty-eight minutes, jumped 
into the buggy, and barely was in time for my appoint- 
ment. The exercises were over by the middle of the 
afternoon, and I hustled back up the mountain, reach- 
ing the nest at 4.15. The bird was on, and I pulled 
the thread, the shutter set for its longest movement, 
about a second and a half, and with the doublet lens, 
giving four times the illumination of the single lens. 

28 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

By 4.30 I had the plate changed and was in hiding. 
At 5.05 the hen returned to her eggs. When she was 
still I was about to pull the thread when a wonderful 
thing happened. Just in the rear of the sprouts under 
which she was sitting I caught sight of some large 
creature, apparently sneaking up to kill her. At first, 
through the foliage, I took it to be a hog or dog. When 
it got almost to her, I saw it was a big bird, all bristled 
up, a turkey gobbler, I thought. Suddenly it made a 
rush right into the nest. Involuntarily I almost shouted 
and leaped to my feet to rush out and save the eggs 
from vandalism, when it suddenly dawned upon me 
that it was the male bird making love in his own way. 
The hen was too quick for him. She flushed like a 
projectile from a gun and was gone, leaving her admirer 
beside the nest. For fully a minute he stood there, 
perfectly still, the very picture of pomposity. His tail 
was erected and spread to its widest extent, as was the 
glorious black ruff on his neck. The head was raised 
and the wings drooped. After thus duly surveying 
the situation he finally strutted proudly off into the 
bushes. Meanwhile I was undergoing counter-blasts 
of excitement, delighted with the scene, and chagrined 
that he was just out of the field and focus for which 
the camera was set. What a picture that would have 
been! 

The hen returned to her brooding within five minutes, 
and I made the exposure. But somewhere in the 
bushes the old rooster was watching, and again, in 

£9 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

about three minutes, he tried to rush her. She darted 
off when he was six feet away and again he struck his 
pose, proud even in defeat. 

Not certain of success, owing to the darkness of the 
woods, I left the camera set over night, well covered 
with a rubber cloth. It was well I did so, for the plates 
were still badly under-exposed. I was back the next 
morning soon after nine o'clock. The bird was on, 
and the light much better, shining from in front of the 
nest. I made the exposure and set the shutter for 
another trial, this time for prolonged time exposure. 
It took the bird over three hours to come back, but the 
weather was warm and the eggs would not suffer. 
This time the shutter went wrong and stayed open. 
Again I set it and late in the afternoon obtained an- 
other shot. The bird stayed perfectly still when I 
pulled the string which opened the shutter, so I let it 
remain open for ten seconds, and this time I had a 
well-exposed plate. The first one of the morning was 
also good. So at last I had my reward for three days' 
labor, walking twenty-four miles and driving sixteen, 
to complete my series of game bird portraits. 

That very day my next door neighbor found another 
nest, with eight eggs, within ten minutes walk of home. 
It was in a beautiful grove of white birches under the 
trunk of a fallen tree, which was prettily overgrown 
with vines. This bird also was shy and would not let 
me come within sight of her on the nest without whirring 
off, not skulking like the other. I had learned now 

30 




Ruffed Grouse incubating. Secured by leaving the camera set over night (p. 30). 




Ruffed Grouse in confinement 



like a turkey 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

how to work. In the morning I would hide the camera 
among the debris of the upturned tree near the nest. 
I would leave it out and return about noon to pull the 
thread, allowing ten or fifteen seconds' exposure. In 
this way I secured the best of all my pictures of the 
Ruffed Grouse. 

In early autumn the young of the year have a curious 
habit of flying blindly into all sorts of places. The 
theory has been advanced that these are the profligate 
young men of the tribe, off on drunken sprees; that 
they eat too freely of poke-berries, or other fruit, and 
thereby become intoxicated. Of this there is no certain 
proof. Perhaps they are trying to escape from hawks, 
or get bewildered in their wanderings. At any rate 
they do it and I have observed, or been told of, various 
instances. Once I found one in my church cellar, and 
recently one dashed against the window of a neighbor's 
house and fell dazed to the piazza. It was brought to 
me and for a month I kept it in a hen-coop to study and 
photograph. It ate freely of berries and green corn, 
strutted about, saying "quit, quit," like a turkey, now 
and then making a purring sound, like a sitting hen, 
and some whining noises. After a time I sent it to 
Bronx Park, New York City, where afterward I saw it 
in one of the pheasant pens. 

Ned was not on hand for the grouse shooting just 
described, but has seen enough to become enthusiastic 
over this sort of game hunting. As for myself, I have 
shot the game birds both with gun and camera and, 

31 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

while I would not despise the former sort of hunting, I 
like the other much better. 

Had this book been written a century or so ago, there 
would have been several other species to enroll among 
the upland game-birds of the Eastern and Middle 
Districts. One of these, the Wild Turkey, has long 
since disappeared from the region, but is still found in 
some parts of the South. In a very wild part of central 
Florida, miles from any dwelling of man, in the year 
1902, I happened upon a nest of the Wild Turkey. It 
was a mere hollow, lined with a few feathers, under a 
small palmetto, just on the border of the prairie and a 
great cypress forest. The dozen or so of eggs had 
recently hatched and the shells, neatly split in halves, 
lay in the nest. Then there was the Heath Hen, 
similar to the Pinnated Grouse or Prairie Hen, abundant 
in those days, but now exterminated, save a small 
remnant which hide in the tangled scrub-oak tracts on 
the island of Martha's Vineyard, Mass. The State 
and other agencies are trying to save them, but the 
result trembles in the balance. The Wild or Passenger 
Pigeon which visited the region in countless multitudes 
has likewise disappeared, with the possible exception 
of a few stragglers. Various persons report that they 
have seen them, but, as with supposed ghosts, they 
never show themselves to a competent witness, and 
certainly in most cases people have mistaken them for 
the common Mourning Dove. 

This latter bird is still with us in small numbers, 

32 



HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 

though in the West they are still abundant. One of 
the most pleasing sounds of spring is the "cooing" of 
these gentle creatures, "coo, coo, coo-o," it comes, 
seemingly from afar, it is so soft and ventriloquial. 
Indeed it sounds to me quite like the distant hooting 
of the Great Horned Owl. The Mourning Dove used 
to be considered a game bird, and open seasons were 
allowed for hunting it. But now, in most States, it is 
protected like a song-bird, as indeed it should be. It 
nests in scattered pairs in woods or pastures, building a 
frail loose nest of twigs, generally in some low crotch 
of a tree, in a thicket, or even on the ground, where I 
have now and then seen them. Several times also I 
have found their two white eggs in old Robins' nests. 
In late summer and fall they gather into small flocks 
and resort to grain or stubble fields to feed. They do 
not hurt the grain, but merely glean the kernels which 
have fallen. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS, AND OTHERS 

(Hawks) 

THIS beautiful May morning, the twelfth, the falls 
were simply glorious. The recent heavy rain 
had filled the mountain brook with a rushing 
torrent which took its fifty-foot leap into the dark rocky 
gorge with an unusual roar. Thence it thundered 
down a series of cascades to join the river below, past 
the dark hemlock forest on both sides which added its 
dignified whisperings to the tumult of the waters. Here 
and there among the dark green of the hemlocks showed 
the pale yellows of the oaks, chestnuts, and birches, 
which were just beginning to unfold their verdure. 

It was warbler-time, and as I scrambled along half- 
way up the steep declivity, following up the stream on 
the left bank, I was watching a little company of 
warblers, among which were several of the beautiful 
Blackburnians, ceaselessly active in the upper branches 
of the hemlocks. Just then I caught sight of something 
which made me lose the warblers. Not far away from 
me was an oak, in whose second crotch, forty feet up, 
was a sizable nest of sticks, from which projected, 
with an upward slant, a stubby thing which looked 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

like a hawk's tail. Was it really that? It is easy to 
see what one wants to see, and sometimes an old stick 
will prove deceptive. I do not like the feeling of the 
collapse of one's hopes, but I do enjoy exciting anticipa- 
tion. My powerful Zeiss glasses showed me that it 
was surely a hawk and so I stood there awhile enjoying 
the sight. Now I cautiously advanced and came nearly 
to the tree before the hawk heard my steps above the 
din of the waters. She stood up in the nest, and away 
she went, with a shrill, high-pitched scream — "whe-e-e," 
and alighted upon a tall tree a hundred feet away, 
where she continued to squeal her displeasure. 

"Broad-wing! Fine!" I ejaculated. Not our com- 
monest hawk by any means! And an obliging Broad- 
wing! I had no climbing irons with me, but as I 
examined the situation, it seemed as though the bird 
had had my convenience in mind in selecting the site 
for her nest. About fifteen feet away was a rather 
large hemlock, with step-ladder branches beginning 
about fifteen feet up, and close beside it a young hem- 
lock, making another step-ladder up to the first branch 
of the big tree. To run upstairs was the simplest thing 
in the world, if one did not mind elevation, and very 
soon I was overlooking the nest with its two sizable 
dirty white eggs blotched with brown, lying on a bed 
of bark, dry leaves and twigs, with a few green hemlock 
sprays on the side for ornament. It was too nice up 
there to hurry down. The tree was on the edge of 
quite a steep declivity, and far below I could see the 

35 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

swirling water, which roared away unceasingly, almost 
loud enough to drown the angry screams of the hawk, 
which was now making dashes at my head, sheering 
off just out of reach. 

But it would not do to stay there longer and lose the 
golden moments, so I descended, crossed the brook on 
some projecting rocks, and entered an extensive and 
beautiful hemlock grove. Within a few rods of the 
great fall I recalled that there was an old hawk's nest 
high in a hemlock, which I had examined year by year, 
hoping to find it again occupied, as hawks often return 
to their old nest, or else it is taken by other hawks even 
after the tenement has had years of disuse. Seven 
springs successively I had looked at it, but I was not 
hopeless, so long as it held together. This time it 
certainly looked large and fresh, as though it had been 
added to. Under it were freshly-broken sticks and 
one hawk's feather. Though no one answered to my 
stormy knocks at the door, I went upstairs without 
invitation, and looking into the airy bedroom I found 
three plain bluish-white eggs characteristic of the 
Cooper's Hawk, laid, as is usual with this species, on 
scales or chunks of hard, rough bark without any other 
lining to the big stick nest. And now, seeing that the 
game was up, Mrs. Cooper announced her displeasure 
by an angry demand as to what business I had up there 
without her permission — " cack-cack-cack-cack-cack- 
cack!" "Oh, none at all; your humble servant," I 
said, meekly descending, when I had looked her home 

36 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

over to my satisfaction. "But what made you desert 
me in all these eight years?" 

Wasn't this great to find two hawks' nests in the 
same woods not a quarter of a mile apart ! Here was fun 
enough laid out for Ned and me. But it will be danger- 
ous for other birds and squirrels and rabbits which live 
here. These falls will witness many a tragedy. Little 
do the picnic parties which come here almost daily 
realize that four savage robbers are watching them 
from the tree tops. How blind the average people 
seem, for I can hardly imagine myself not discovering 
at least this nest right in the picnic grove before I had 
been there an hour. 

It will seem strange if these robber families which 
make their living by killing every smaller creature that 
comes in their way manage not to disagree among 
themselves and have some terrible fights. But the 
probability is that each pair will stay on its own side of 
the brook and attend strictly to its own business. If 
either is the aggressor, I think it will be the Cooper's 
Hawks, for they are bold, pestilent fellows, the worst 
nuisance of the whole tribe to the farmers, like their 
smaller relative the Sharp-shinned Hawk, while the 
Broad-wing is a slow-moving, sedate sort of bird, con- 
tenting itself mostly with the humbler sorts of prey 
and seldom troubling poultry. 

I am wondering another thing, too, whether these 
numerous mountain brooks of this hilly country, with 
their falls and deep rocky gorges, do not all have their 

37 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

robbers. Only two days before this I was descending 
the gorge of another similar mountain stream hardly 
two miles from here, when I noticed a hawk's nest in 
an oak tree over the water. It was an old one, not 
occupied, and presently, as I went on, I came to an- 
other in the top of a tall dead birch tree, also right over 
the stream. It was evidently not occupied, but I 
clapped my hands loudly to inquire, and was surprised 
to see a Broad-wing fly away from somewhere lower 
down, though not from the nest. Innocently assuming 
that she was preparing to use this nest and had been 
perching silently near it, I was about to go on without 
climbing, as I had no irons with me, and to return later, 
when I happened to espy a neat new nest in a low hem- 
lock, not half as high as the nest in the birch, well con- 
cealed in the branches. White down clung to the twigs 
all about it and there was now no question as to where 
the hawk had flown from. It was only thirty feet up, 
with branches all the way, and I w r as quickly examining 
the two eggs, similar to those of the broad- winged 
robber of the other falls. Growing beside this tree, at 
just the right distance to set a camera, was a slender 
but strong young oak. I had never photographed the 
Broad-wing Hawk from life, and now, with these two 
nicely situated nests, certainly there was a fine chance. 
My friend Ned was as yet inexperienced in the joys 
and triumphs of hawking and I had him with me a 
few days later when I made the first try at snapping 
the Broad-wings, selecting the nest at the big falls. 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

Meanwhile, one afternoon, I had gone the rounds 
again, and by each of the three raptores' nests — "rap- 
tores," meaning robbers, is the Latin scientific name of 
the order of hawks, owls, and the like — I had tied up a 
small cereal box with a round hole in one end, to 
represent a camera and lens, with a piece of burlap or 
sacking pinned over it, like a focusing cloth, placing 
this in the hemlock tree just where I planned to set the 
camera. The hawks generally get used to the novelty 
after awhile, and, when the real camera is set there, 
they do not mind it at all. The main trouble is to 
make them believe you have left the woods, for they 
will not go to the nest as long as they think anyone is 
near. 

The hawk was at home, having become used to my 
dummy camera. With my own 4x5 camera slung 
over my shoulder in its case and other necessary instru- 
ments in my pocket, I began to climb and told Ned to 
come up after me. By the time he was halfway up the 
tree he hesitated, for it seemed a long way down to that 
roaring brook. I told him to keep his eyes on a level 
and not mind the rocks below, because there were 
plenty of strong branches and he could not fall. So he 
got up where he could look into the nest and watched 
me fix the camera. 

It took me quite a while to rig it up, screwing it with 
a bolt and ball-and-socket clamp to the right hand side 
of the trunk, so it could point toward the nest and 
nothing be in the way of the plate-holder. I took off 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

the back lens of the doublet and used the single front 
member, of eighteen inches focus, which gave a good 
large image of the nest even from that distance. When 
it was focused and everything ready I tied the end of 
the spool of strong black linen thread to the shutter, 
dropped the spool to the ground, set the shutter, and 
then we climbed carefully down, so as not to pull the 
thread and spoil the plate. 

The next thing was to find a good hiding place from 
which to watch for the return of the hawk. About a 
gunshot away, up the hill, a large chestnut tree had 
fallen, and under it seemed a good chance to hide. 
Ned held the thread so the shutter would not be re- 
leased, while I further unwound it and laid it out 
carefully, to avoid tangling, to the old trunk. Crawling 
in under, I called Ned, and he hurried up and came in 
too. From a peek hole I could just see the nest through 
the leaves and branches. The only thing to do now 
was to watch when the hawk came back to the nest, 
and then pull the thread carefully so as not to jar the 
camera while the shutter opened for the required half 
second. The bellows were so long that in the woods 
this was none too much, even with the lens at full 
opening. 

We lay perfectly still and listened to the hawk 
music. Both of the pair were flying around and 
screaming away like good ones. It seemed as though 
they surely would stop in a few minutes and get to work 
at housekeeping again, but they kept right at it. In 

40 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

half an hour we felt pretty well cramped. Ned com- 
plained that his neck ached like fury, and mine was in 
the same condition. The hawks were still alarmed 
and something was evidently wrong. 

"I don't believe it's the camera that disturbs them," 
I said to Ned. "I think they know we have not gone. 
What do you say to going off out of sight, making 
plenty of racket as you go, and see if the birds can count 
and remember there was another fellow?" 

"All right," he replied, and he left me, secretly glad, 
I am sure, to straighten out the kinks in his persecuted 
neck. 

He had not been gone two minutes before the yelling 
ceased. There was dead silence awhile, and then I 
saw a hawk alight in a tree near the nest. Next she 
flew to another branch, and then glided right on to the 
nest and stood erect, looking and listening. This was 
my chance, and steadily and slowly I pulled the thread 
taut. The hawk gave no sign of having heard the 
shutter and settled down to brood. I gave her ten 
minutes to get over her alarm and watched her through 
my field glass. Now and then she would turn her head 
and then would settle back with a sleepy air, just like 
an old sitting hen. 

The exciting question now was whether or not the 
shutter had sprung, or had the thread got tangled. 
Quietly I crawled out from my retreat and away fronr 
it, so as not to show the hawk where I had hidden. 
As soon as I walked boldly, she flew, and I hurried to 

41 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

climb the tree and was overjoyed to find the shutter 
closed. 

"Good work!" I shouted to Ned. "I've got a pic- 
ture, and we'll try for another." So I changed the 
plate, set the shutter again, and this time walked off 
noisily beyond the log and to one side of it. Then I 
dropped to the ground and crept silently to it on my 
hands and knees. The hawk did not see or hear me. 
She was silent, after a few moments, and seemed to go 
off somewhere. But in a quarter of an hour I suddenly 
saw a shadow and something glided swiftly through 
the woods, and almost immediately she was on the 
nest. This time I let her settle down to incubate before 
I pulled, and I "got" her sidewise, a fine clear picture. 

The hawk was becoming accustomed to my ap- 
proaches, and, anyhow, Broad-wings are the tamest of 
the hawks. As I changed the plate I called to Ned, 
for he was anxious to be in the game, and I thought 
that our robber friend would now give us permission. 
We both hid, and this time she thought the coast was 
clear and soon came back. She flew straight toward 
the nest and seemed to go to it, yet absolutely disap- 
peared. 

"Where is she?" whispered Ned excitedly. "I can't 
see her at all." "I think," I hurriedly answered, "that 
she is close to the nest behind that big branch. Anyhow 
I'm going to try it." So I pulled the thread and the 
hawk flew from just where I thought. What luck 
that I pulled then! This picture was a wonder. The 




Broad-winged Hawk on nest. "Let her settle down to incubate" (p. 42). 




Broad-winged Hawk on nest. The better of the pictures saved from the accident 

(pp. 44-6). 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

hawk stands on the stub, in the act of entering the 
nest with a chunk of bark. Why did she bring it? 
Others can answer as well as I. I have seen other 
hawks bring things, too. They carry in fresh green 
sprays or leaves each day, apparently for ornament, 
just as we have our house plants, but it is not so clear 
why they bring lining when the nest has long been 
built. Possibly it is because the nest keeps breaking 
down, or the rotten sticks crumble, so they have to 
keep adding to it, and get in the habit of bringing 
something each time they return not otherwise laden, 
so as to save steps, just as the farmer's boys are told to 
bring in an armful of wood every time they come to 
the kitchen. 

We got three more good shots that day, six in all, the 
best day's hawking I ever had, for every one of them 
was good. I let Ned pull the thread once, so that he 
could say that he had taken a picture of a wild hawk 
from life. 

I was alone when I photographed the other Broad- 
wing and Ned missed one of the times of his life ! The 
hawk would not go near the nest while I was in the 
woods and I had no one with me to go away, so next 
time I brought my little brown umbrella tent and 
pitched it down the stream, where I could just see if 
the hawk went to the nest, though I could not see her 
upon it. It was no fun rigging the camera in that 
slender oak, with nothing but the trunk to hold on to, 
one foot in a small crotch, the other supported by the 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

iron spur. There were sharp rocks beneath and I 
had to be exceedingly careful. Indeed one could not 
be enough so, having to use both hands at times to 
adjust the camera. It was awkward, nerve-trying 
work, and took a long time, but it was finally done, the 
thread cable laid, and I crawled into the tent. The 
hawk was suspicious, and it was only after hours of 
waiting with eyes at the peek hole and neck almost 
paralyzed, that I secured two shots at her on the nest, 
and then, with the precious plates, I followed the path 
back to the "rig." 

I had driven the horse up a rocky wood road until the 
ascent became too steep and rough for further progress, 
and hitched to a tree in a little opening. It was two 
o'clock when I drove down, and, as I had not brought 
much lunch, I was hungry. Just then I remembered 
an apple in my pocket which a boy whom I met had 
given me. It proved quite hard, so I opened my 
knife to cut it and let the horse climb unguided down 
the declivity. I only looked off for a moment, but it 
was a moment too long. The horse swerved slightly 
and made the wheel on the right strike a steep rock 
projecting close to the trail. As quick as a flash the 
buggy was overturned and I was pitched out into the 
bushes, knife in hand. Fortunately I was not cut, but 
I lost the reins and the frightened horse ran away, 
galloping down the rocky trail, the buggy bottom-side- 
up, camera, plates, tripod, everything, being scattered 
to the winds. Then with a flying leap down a steep 

44 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

pitch, where there was a sharp turn in the road, the 
horse and buggy disappeared and all was still. 

My state of mind may be imagined as I hurried after 
the flying apparition. Rather singularly, the first 
thought that came to me was that after working nearly 
all day for those hawk pictures, they were all smashed 
to pieces. But I passed the plates and camera where 
they had fallen and rushed on to see what had become 
of the horse. When I came to the pitch and bend in 
the road I saw the sight of a lifetime. There was the 
overturned buggy and a capsized horse entangled in 
the harness, helpless from lying with her legs uphill. 
These members were feebly waving in the air, as though 
set on a derelict for signals of distress. 

A man in the field below had seen the final catas- 
trophe and hurried to the rescue. Together we man- 
aged to unhitch the "fool" animal and drag away the 
buggy with its two dished wheels. But the horse could 
not get up, though I could see no injury save a slight 
cut on one leg. I suggested that it only needed to turn 
turtle and roll down hill, but, as it would not do this, 
we must do the little trick for it ourselves. It seemed 
rather ungracious to ask the farmer to take the business 
end of the animal, so I had him grasp the front legs, 
while I gingerly laid hold of the " kickers," and we bent 
our backs. Presto! The horse rolled over and then 
struggled to its feet, where it stood taking in the situa- 
tion. Then its head drooped. Was it going to die? 
It was a young and valuable horse which I had recently 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

bought, and I felt anxious. What do you think it did? 
The strongest instinct asserted itself, even in the hour 
of trial. The horse was even hungrier than I. Graz- 
ing, as I live! We men looked at one another and 
laughed. 

Then I hurried to take further account of stock. 
The camera was unbroken; the precious plates were 
sound, and produced two good pictures after all. We 
pushed the spokes back into the hub and in a quarter 
of an hour I was driving home as though nothing had 
happened, slowly though, for the wheels might break 
down again, and actually, the horse for the next week 
seemed afraid to "step lively," evidently fearing lest it 
should again fall down! 

When I met Ned and told him the story, the first 
question he asked was — "Did you photograph the 
wreck?" Well, I never! What a brilliant idea and 
what a stupid omission to be so concerned about a 
horse as to overlook this wonderful opportunity. I 
almost wanted to go back and try it over again. But 
it was not to be. "Next time, Ned," I replied regret- 
fully, "such a bright boy as you must surely be along 
when anything interesting happens." "You can count 
on me, if I know it," he said. 

The young hawks hatched in due time, one only in 
the great falls nest, but both in the other. The evening 
before Ned's birthday, the second of June, as we 
climbed to the latter, we could hear a "cheep, cheep," 
as from under a mother hen. What was our surprise 

46 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

to find eggs still in the nest. But each one had a hole 
in it and a yellow hooked bill sticking through. "Your 
birthday will be the Broadwings' birthday," I said to 
Ned. 

From time to time we came and photographed the 
young in both nests until they were ready to leave, in 
early July, and also the young Cooper's Hawks, only two 
of which hatched. I had placed a dummy camera six 
feet away in the next hemlock, after the young hatched, 
but I did not get time to experiment on the mother. 
She was a shy rascal and one could hardly get a 
glimpse at her, even by stealing toward the nest on tip- 
toe. One day I went to the nest, leaving Ned at the 
foot of the great fall sailing chip boats. This time 
Mrs. Cooper came to meet me and, perched on a 
low branch quite near, gave me a terrible scolding. 
Ned could not hear my yells above the roar of the 
cataract, so I went to summon him for the fine sight, 
but when I returned with him the hawk had gotten 
over her sudden streak of boldness and taken herself 
off. 

By far the best way to get familiar with hawks is to 
find their nests and then from time to time visit them 
at home and study their habits. At other times one 
can get only occasional glimpses at them, as they soar 
overhead, or dive into the poultry yard, or dash upon 
one in the woods, or perch upon some tree by the road- 
side. But one can learn more of hawks in a season by 
finding a few of their nests than would be possible 

47 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

otherwise in years. They are such fine, large, spirited 
birds, their nests big, in big trees, in big woods, and 
there is a peculiar fascination in hunting for them. 
The boy who catches the hawk fever will find it almost 
impossible to cure. I had a severe attack of this fever 
when about fifteen years old, and there is no sign yet of 
my getting over it. I fear that Ned has caught it from 
me and will be in for it for life. 

During the late fall and winter I usually have some 
fine tramps exploring the groves or woodland tracts 
where there is the tallest timber, looking up likely 
nesting places and old nests which may be occupied 
another year. Hawk's nests are built entirely of 
sticks; those built wholly or in part of leaves belong to 
squirrels. Then there are crow's nests, which cannot 
always be distinguished from those of hawks. 

In the nesting season the signs of a new, occupied 
nest are these: the ends of the sticks in the nest ap- 
pearing a lighter color, freshly broken; similar sticks 
on the ground beneath the nest; bits of white down 
clinging to the nest or to twigs near it. The ques- 
tion is often settled by seeing the hawk fly off as we 
approach. 

It is great fun to hunt up the nests of the big "Hen 
Hawks" — Red-tails and Red-shoulders — in the first of 
the season, during April. The temperature is fine for 
vigorous tramping and climbing, and it is splendid, 
exhilarating sport. Each pair of these birds stay in 
the same woods year after year, and either use the same 

48 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

nest, or another not far from it. Sometimes they 
alternate between two or three nests, which remain as 
landmarks for years. 

This was the case with a pair of Red-tails about four 
miles from my home. About every other year they 
would go off to some nest which I did not succeed in 
locating, but the next year they would be in either of 
two nests about two hundred yards apart. One was a 
big affair, sixty feet up a giant oak which grew from 
the foot of quite a precipice. From the top of this 
ledge, by climbing a sapling, one could see into the nest. 
It was a hard matter, though, to climb the old oak to 
the nest, the trunk was so thick and the bark so loose. 
But Ned did it with the help of a rope, and photographed 
the nest and eggs very successfully. 

The other nest was in a chestnut stub, forty feet up. 
Back from it the hill sloped up quite abruptly. There 
was a thick hemlock tree with branches down to the 
ground on this slope near the nest. One day I pitched 
my umbrella tent under the hemlock, and the next 
afternoon when she had become accustomed to it, I 
had Ned leave me hidden in it and took three pictures 
with my high-powered telephoto lens of the mother 
hawk as she returned to the nest. 

This last season the pair occupied a new nest in the 
same woods, in a chestnut tree which grew near a 
hemlock. There was one young hawk in the nest, 
hatched about the twenty-seventh of April. Up in the 
hemlock I rigged a dummy camera which was so well 

49 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

concealed by the evergreen foliage that the wary hawks 
paid no attention to it. Down the side hill, as far off 
as I could see the nest through the woods, I pitched my 
brown tent and left it there indefinitely. By rigging 
my camera in place of the dummy, connecting it with 
the tent by a thread and hiding there, I secured some 
interesting pictures, after a number of attempts, and 
long vigils. The mother hawk would perch on a 
distant hemlock on the ridge of the mountain and 
silently watch for over an hour. Then she would fly 
off and be gone a couple of hours longer before return- 
ing to the nest. One afternoon after watching steadily 
for four hours from the peek hole in the tent, I fell asleep 
— the only time I ever did such a thing afield. I only 
dozed for a few minutes, but it was just at the critical 
time, for the old hawk came and fed her young one 
and flew off just as I had awakened and was in the act 
of pulling the thread. The day was wasted, and I felt 
unutterable things. However I tried again and again. 
Another time the shutter stuck and made useless a 
long vigil. But finally, after some rather poor expos- 
ures, I snapped the keen and wary creature standing 
quietly by her chick, enjoying its society— a beautiful 
picture. Another day, as I watched, the old bird 
came with a snake dangling from her claws. She 
circled around three times, then hastily deposited the 
snake and was off before I dared to pull, as I had set 
the shutter for half a second. I watched for her return 
for several hours, and then she came and proceeded to 

50 




Home life of the Red-tailed Hawk. "The wary creature standing quietly by her 

chick" (p. 50). 




Red-tailed Hawk. " Proceeded to tear up the snake for her young one" (pp. 50-1) . 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

tear up the snake for her young one, and the camera 
this time caught her in the act. On the sixth of June I 
photographed the youngster, fully fledged, about to 
leave the nest, at the ripe age of forty days. 

Sometimes hawks betray the locations of their own 
nests. Usually they are pretty careful about ap- 
proaching them, but the Red-tails and Red-shoulders 
are often noisy in the woods near the nest, and can be 
seen circling over it. Noticing this, people living or 
working near the woods can often put one on the track 
of a nest. The Cooper's and Sharp-shinned Hawks 
often cackle angrily when one comes near the treasure, 
and thus betray their secret. Whenever a small hawk 
sets up a "cack-cack-cack" in the woods in nesting 
time, one may be confident that a nest is close by. 

A Cooper's Hawk which I once photographed on the 
nest used to build every year in the same tract of woods. 
A friend of mine was unfortunate enough to live near 
these woods and was trying to raise chickens. Though 
he had ropes stretched all about hung with bottles and 
rags, and every corner had its scarecrow — or "scare- 
hawk!" — neighbor Cooper was accustomed to visit 
him on friendly errands several times a day and each 
time had to have a chicken. So I told him I would 
break up the nest for him, and went in there one after- 
noon. After exploring nearly the whole woods in vain, 
I came back and entered a grove of tall trees so near 
his house that I had no idea that a hawk would build 
there. Immediately the hawks set up a prodigious 

51 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

cackling. It took but a little time to find the nest in 
the tip-top crotch of a chestnut, forty feet from the 
ground, the twigs all around fairly bristling with down. 
This was the twenty-first of May, and the amount of 
down indicated that incubation was well under way. 
Strapping on my climbing irons, I went up, and brought 
down the four eggs to give to an egg collector. This 
stopped the raids on the chickens, for the hawks 
forthwith disappeared. 

Later that same season Ned and I found a nice nest 
of the closely related Sharp-shinned Hawk, the second 
one of this bird I have found on the fourth of July. 
We were exploring a very wild mountainous region, 
in a swampy tract of black spruce woods. We entered 
it after skirting a typical wet sphagnum swamp, and 
about the first thing I saw was a nest of sticks in a small 
spruce, fifteen feet up. Ned and I climbed the tree, 
and we stayed up there some time, enjoying the interest- 
ing sight. Three little Sharp-shinned Hawks in white 
down, and two unhatched eggs were our prize in the 
neatly built nest of small sticks. As we studied them, 
the old hawk came dashing up, and from trees near by 
made a great ado. The wind up there on the moun- 
tains was blowing almost a gale, and the trees were 
swaying like so many reeds. By waiting patiently for 
momentary lulls in the wind, I finally accomplished it. 

These five species of hawks are the only ones that 
we are liable to find in our woods in the nesting time. 
The Bald Eagle is only a big hawk, but it is scarce 

52 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

and seldom nests in this region. I have seen many 
nests in the South, and it is probable that most of 
those we see have wandered up thence after the nest- 
ing season. The small Pigeon Hawk is a common 
migrant. 

The Osprey breeds in colonies in a few places along 
the seacoast. They are beloved and protected, and 
build on isolated trees on farms, often right in the door- 
yard of a house. I only wish they would build in a tree 
on my front lawn! Any person who tried to molest 
them would find me looking for trouble. The nests are 
as big as haycocks and look out of place up in the trees. 
They are made of large sticks and all sorts of rubbish. 
One that I examined had an old umbrella woven into 
it, another an old dried dead hen! I sat in the nest 
myself, though, and found it very comfortable. But it 
is hard getting there. You come up underneath, and 
the thing bulges out beyond you like a balloon, and 
there seems no easy way to get up on top. 

Hunting Marsh Hawks' nests is very different from 
this other "hawking." They build on the ground in a 
bushy swamp or wet pasture, and one has to tramp 
around at random until he comes within a few steps of 
the sitting bird. She will fly up and go through an 
astonishing performance of diving at one's head and 
screaming, but I never knew one to actually strike. 

Then there is the little Sparrow Hawk which stays 
with us only in small numbers, nesting in hollow trees 
or in Flickers' holes along the borders of farms, or in 

53 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

pastures. He is a harmless and useful little fellow, 
feeding on mice, moles, and insects. 

Most of the hawks appear only infrequently in winter, 
but I have seen about all of them, at rare intervals, 
even the little Sparrow Hawk. On a bitter cold day, 
the tenth of February, a neighbor caught one in his 
barn, where the poor little thing hoped to catch a 
mouse to keep itself from starving. Red-tails are the 
commonest, and frequently I meet them perched on a 
large tree by the edge of the woods or by the roadside. 
One had better look sharply at the supposed Red-tail, 
for it might prove to be the rarer American Rough- 
legged Hawk from the North, a large bird of the same 
size, but with feathered legs like the Golden Eagle. 

At long intervals there is a winter when the fierce 
Goshawk is common, following unusual migrations of 
northern birds. The winter of 1906-7 was such a one, 
and these hawks were frequently seen well down into 
the Middle States, or further. Sometimes they came 
almost in flocks — loose, straggling, companies. I saw 
one Goshawk from the window of a train as it hovered 
over a river. In the town where I live a boy shot one 
sitting on his henyard fence. Its crop was stuffed full 
of the flesh of a fowl which it had just killed and was in 
the act of eating. In the next town a friend of mine 
shot one of these hawks as it perched on a fence at the 
edge of some woods. The snow was deep, and, as he 
picked up the dead hawk, a Ruffed Grouse darted 
from the snow close at his feet. Evidently the hawk 

54 




"Three little Sharp-shinned Hawks . 

prize' 



. . and two unhatched eggs were our 
(p. 52). 




Nest of Marsh Hawk. "They build on the ground 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

had been in pursuit of it and the poor bird had dived 
headlong into the snow to escape its fury. The hawk 
had then alighted on the fence and waited for it to 
come out. As I write this, he looks down on me re- 
proachfully with glass eyes from the top of my case. 
Ah, you rascal, you will kill no more grouse! Yet, 
after all, who has a better right? I am not so sure that 
we, out of our luxurious abundance, had better make 
the claim. 

Ned and I are so fond of hunting hawks with the 
camera and studying these bold, breezy people of the 
forest, that we fairly mourn to see them exterminated. 
Of course we do not blame those for killing them whose 
property they devastate, yet we wish that people would 
in justice discriminate between the pestiferous and the 
harmless or useful kinds, and cultivate enough of the 
modern "outdoor" spirit to make them enjoy seeing 
wild life in nature and get away from the ignorant, 
worn-out notion that the only good hawk is a dead 
one. 

The Biological Survey, of the U. S. Department of 
Agriculture has shown that only the Accipitrine hawks 
— Cooper's, Sharp-shin, and Goshawk — are injurious. 
The so-called "Hen Hawks" only occasionally attack 
poultry, especially in the winter, when driven to it by 
starvation, but by killing the smaller varmints and 
insects do more good than harm. Now and then an 
individual, like the tiger, acquires a taste for the wrong 
sort of meat, and may properly be suppressed. So, 

55 



THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 

kind reader, I beg of you, do, please, not shoot a hawk 
because he is a hawk, but only if you are sure he is 
the culprit. Learn from a handbook of birds to 
distinguish the different kinds. You will enjoy their 
acquaintance and then will not be in danger of mis- 
taking your friend and helper for a murderer. 

Now and then we shall probably see a large black 
bird with enormous spread of wing soaring on almost 
motionless pinions, drifting easily along with the breeze, 
It is the Turkey Vulture, or Turkey Buzzard, which is 
classed in this group of raptorial birds. Though from 
afar it would seem a beautiful creature, so graceful in 
flight, it is distance which lends the enchantment, for 
at close quarters it is a foul-smelling carrion-monger, 
with an ugly, featherless red head and neck. Yet for 
all that it is a useful scavenger and an interesting bird, 
and I wish we had more of them in the northern dis- 
tricts to give us exhibitions of graceful, easy flight. 
They are accidental in New England, where I have 
seen only two, but are more frequent in the Middle 
States, and, of course, abundant in the South. They 
build no nest, but lay their two large handsomely- 
marked eggs on the ground under a bush, or in a 
hollow log or stump. 



56 



CHAPTER IV 

THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

(Owls) 

IF all classes of birds were as hard to become ac- 
quainted with as the owls, the increasing thousands 
of boys and girls, men and women, who discover 
for themselves the fascination of the sport of bird study 
would mostly get discouraged and try other things. 
Even I must confess that I should need to see a bird 
now and then to keep up my enthusiasm. But, as far 
as the bird of night is concerned, sometimes, in spite of 
all my efforts, whole seasons slip by without my meeting 
with a single owl. Even Ned, with all his activity, has 
but very few times in his life discovered an owl in the 
wilds, other than what I had first located. The owls 
are both scarce and secretive, usually remaining in 
hiding during the daytime, and the student need not 
be too much chagrined at being unable to find them. 
Fortunately there are plenty of other birds to interest 
and occupy one afield. So hunt away, keeping the 
eyes peeled for the hid treasure, and some time, surely, 
you will find the bird with the big eyes, and get such a 
thrill of delicious excitement in your success that you 
will not begrudge the waiting which made the joy of 
attainment so keen. 

57 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

Fortunately, though, the owls have voices, and most 
of them are inclined, at times, to lift them up in singing 
— if one may so call it. This makes an intelligent and 
persistent hunt for them quite likely to succeed, pro- 
vided, of course, that there are any owls there to find. 
And owls there almost certainly are within the limits 
of any country town which is reasonably well wooded 
with fairly large timber and is not too suburban. 

Our two principal "hooters" are the Great Horned 
Owl and the Barred Owl, both of which are confused 
under the popular name of "Hoot Owl." They are 
both big birds, especially the former, which is also 
distinguished from the other by having large ear tufts, 
which look like horns. They do not migrate to any 
great extent, though they wander more or less in winter 
when food is scarce, but stay, for the most part, in the 
same general region or tract of woodland in which they 
nest. In the autumn they begin their loud hootings. 
One can easily distinguish the two by these sounds, for 
the Great Horned Owl has but three hoots to his song, 
while the Barred fellow's vocal effort is much longer 
and more elaborate. They are most apt to hoot about 
sundown on mild or moist days when it threatens to 
rain or snow, and, indeed, they are pretty good weather 
prophets. Probably they "feel it in their bones" when 
a storm is brewing, though there is no likelihood that 
these hardy creatures are rheumatic. These hootings 
are their love notes, their mating cries, and I just wish 
I could find out from them why their fondness deepens 

58 



I 

1 fiBnifii 



Nest of Red-shouldered Hawk. The nest in which the Hawk and Owl both laid 
eggs together (pp. 62-3). 




The Cooper's Hawks' nest by the falls. "Only two of which hatched" (p. 47). 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

with the suggestion of stormy weather. If they were 
accustomed to have comfortable nests, we might think 
that the approaching storm aroused longing for the 
luxuries of home. But as their homes are most un- 
comfortable places, and only one of the pair occupies 
it at the same time, we cannot explain the mystery so 
easily. The only plausible reason I can think of is 
that the rise of temperature which accompanies the 
approach of storm, together with the increasing damp- 
ness, brings some conditions of early spring, at which 
time they are accustomed to nest. Yet hardly has the 
light spring fancy of love awakened before the cold 
northwest wind in the rear of the storm area puts it to 
sleep again. But these are the times to take advantage 
of, to learn where the owl lives. Don't stick in the 
house those winter afternoons. A good winter's tramp, 
or drive, with a bird quest in view, is exhilarating and 
delightful. Why shouldn't you enjoy the distinction 
among your admiring and almost envious bird-loving 
cronies of having yourself found a big owl's nest? I 
never can forget how I felt, when a boy, attending the 
Boston Latin School, when one Monday morning one 
of my schoolmates announced in tones of exultation 
that on the preceding Saturday he had found a Barred 
Owl's nest. I had never found any sort of an owl's 
nest, and that youth became, in my eyes, a real hero, a 
mighty Hercules, almost. If he had become President 
of the United States in later years I should have felt 
but the tiniest fraction of the hero-worship which I then 

59 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

accorded him. So, if it be such a glorious achievement 
in the eyes of some people to find a big owl's nest, and 
if you know of a tract of woods where you keep hearing 
the owls hoot in winter, there is no reason in the wide 
world why you shouldn't be the one to find the nest. 

But when is the time to search? Long before most 
people imagine. In the cold and snowy weather of 
1906-7 a friend of mine found one of my old pairs of 
Great Horned Owls in the pineries of Plymouth County, 
Mass., doing business at the old stand in the middle of 
February! A cold sleet storm was raging, but he 
donned his wet-day uniform of rubber — boots, coat, and 
hat — and found the big owl sitting on her open plat- 
form of sticks high up in a tall white pine on her two 
nearly fresh eggs. He took these as trophies, and early 
in March the great birds had twins again, which he 
allowed to hatch, and enjoyed photographing them as 
they grew up. That is the true sportsman's spirit, to 
defy cold and wet, and what a pleasure it is to add such 
an achievement to the repertoire of one's sporting 
experiences ! 

By the last week in February, probably Washington's 
birthday, every well-regulated family of Great Horned 
Owls in the latitude of from New Jersey to Massa- 
chusetts ought to have eggs, or not later than the tenth 
or fifteenth of March even up in northern New England 
or southern Canada. The Barred Owls are a little 
later, and I have usually found them to have fresh eggs 
by the first of April, and sometimes as early as the 

60 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

middle of March. Both these hardy birds seem to go 
more by the calendar than by the weather, and at the 
regular time they will have their nests and eggs, blow it 
high or low, and be the temperature as bitter as it may. 
Some years, as the time came around, amid a succession 
of blizzards I would say — "Surely those owls will not 
be laying now." But they were, none the less. 

Some pairs are earlier or later than others as a regular 
habit each season, so each owl family has its own 
schedule and will nest each year at about its own accus- 
tomed time. One pair of Barred Owls, for instance, I 
would always find nesting by the middle of March, but 
in the next township another pair would not complete 
their set of two or three eggs till about "April Fool's 
Day." 

The way to find the nest of either of these large owls, 
when one has found out where they usually hoot, is to 
go in and make a thorough canvass of whatever large 
timber is there. Generally they will either occupy the 
old nest of a hawk, crow, or squirrel, which consists 
of a platform of sticks in the crotch of a tall tree, ever- 
green or other, or, if there is a large hollow cavity, 
pretty well up from the ground, they will use that. If 
the large owl is brooding in the cavity, she will fly out 
if the tree is rapped. In case the nest is an open one, 
she will usually fly out when one approaches, though 
not always, for sometimes she will wait until the tree is 
thumped, and once I found a Great Horned Owl which 
would not leave even then, though I could see her great 

61 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

round face looking out over the edge of the nest. One 
must get to know the region and explore it thoroughly, 
not overlooking a single old weather-beaten crow's 
nest, for that may prove to be just the one chosen by 
the owl. As in searching for hawks' nests, the very 
best sign of a nest being occupied is to see bits of downy 
feathers clinging to its edge. The hawk's down is 
white, that of owls gray or yellowish. If you can see 
the down, climb, or get someone else to do it for you 
if you cannot, for the nest is probably occupied, or 
about to be, unless, possibly, an owl has merely eaten 
a grouse up there. 

In my book "Wild Wings" I have detailed so many 
finds of Great Horned and Barred Owls' nests that I 
must not go into this here, but I will tell about a very 
remarkable owl's nest which was recently found by a 
friend, and which I went with him to see. 

Not far from Providence, Rhode Island, across the 
line of Massachusetts, is a little patch of woods, hemmed 
in on all sides by roads, houses, and a trolley line. 
Strangely enough, a pair of Barred Owls stayed there, 
and often during the winter and early spring were seen 
from the cars in the early morning perched by the road- 
side. A friend of mine lived near by, and on the first 
of April he saw one of the owls sitting on a large new 
nest twenty feet up a small maple, and flushed her by 
rapping the tree. In fact he had seen her on or about 
the nest several times before this. It happened that 
I was in Providence giving a bird lecture, and the result 

62 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

was that I went with him on April second to try to 
photograph the owl, which was quite tame. Getting 
ready my reflecting camera to snap her as she flew, I 
advanced toward the nest, when, to my astonishment, 
a Red-shouldered Hawk flew out, too far off for a 
picture. My friend was perfectly dumfounded, for he 
was an experienced ornithologist and was positive be- 
yond question that a Barred Owl had been occupying 
the nest, which now contained three hawk's eggs. 
However, I remembered that another friend had once 
found a nest in which both a Barred Owl and a Red- 
shouldered Hawk had laid, and hoped that this might 
be a similar case. Sure enough, it was. Someone 
shortly after this took the hawk's eggs, but later an- 
other friend visited the nest and found it to contain one 
hawk's egg — probably the last one of the previous set 
— and two Barred Owl's eggs. It was unfortunate that 
the nest was in such a public place, for the mixed family 
were not allowed to hatch, so nothing could be learned 
of the developments of this remarkable occurrence. 

There is another good-sized owl which we are liable 
to find nesting, the Long-eared Owl, which is somewhat 
smaller than the Barred Owl. Unfortunately it is not 
addicted to hooting and is one of the most secretive 
birds I have ever met. Sometimes I start one out from 
the shade of a thick cedar swamp, or other dense tangle, 
but it only allows the merest glimpse as it goes flopping 
away. It generally occupies some old nest and sticks 
to it so closely that one is likely to pass it by, after 

68 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

pounding the tree, without a suspicion that the sly 
brown bird is snuggled closely on her eggs. 

There is one time at least when this silent bird utterly 
changes its usual behavior, and that is when she has 
young, and her nest is invaded. I must tell about one 
such experience which I had. I was camping one 
spring with a party of friends in a wild region, on the 
wooded shore of a large lake. One day, in early June, 
a furious storm was raging, the wind blowing almost a 
hurricane directly on shore, raising surf that would 
have done credit to the ocean. Clad in rubber clothing, 
we were exploring the woods near camp. At length, as 
I struggled through the wet branches, I caught sight of 
what appeared to be a crow's nest, about twenty feet 
up a small oak. Upon close approach I noticed two 
brownish knobs or tufts sticking up from the nest and 
waving in the gale. Then a head was raised, and a 
shrewd-looking face with a pair of bright yellow eyes 
was turned toward me. Beckoning to my friends to 
approach cautiously, I whispered excitedly as they 
drew near — "A Long-eared Owl, for all the world!" 
We were nearly under the nest, and had a fine chance 
for mutual staring. Then I began to ascend the tree, 
and the owl flitted silently off into the shrubbery. The 
nest was certainly an old crow's nest of the previous 
season, slightly repaired on top by the addition of a few 
sticks and leaves; in it were four owlets and an addled 
egg. The young were clad in whitish down, with the 
"juvenal" plumage beginning to show, and were prob- 

64 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

ably about three weeks old. As I was examining the 
odd little fellows, the mother suddenly alighted upon a 
branch a dozen feet from me, ear-tufts erect, eyes fairly 
blazing, feathers ruffled, snapping her bill with a sharp 
clicking sound, and uttering wailing cries which sounded 
much like the yowling of an angry cat. Indeed she 
was the ideal of a vixen, as she flitted from limb to 
limb, with an occasional angry swoop at my head, so 
near as to strike it with her wings, uttering a harsh 
exclamation, as she did so, which, I fear, was an owl 
"swear word." After we all had inspected this prize, 
we withdrew, and saw the mother go back, almost at 
once, to her brooding. 

By afternoon the rain had about ceased to fall, and, 
though it was dark and cold and blustering, as we were 
to leave the locality early next morning, I decided to try 
to photograph the owl. A neighboring tree, only six 
feet from the nest, gave an ideal view point for the 
camera. I had just finished screwing up the instru- 
ment, when the owl, who had been making great 
protests all along, fairly outdid herself. She actually 
alighted on my head, struck her claws into my cap and 
really tried to drag me out of the tree. Though spare 
in build, I proved too heavy for her, and she passed on, 
assisted by an accelerating shove. Then for awhile I 
warded her off, but, when I was off my guard, she 
turned her attention to the camera and alighted on the 
bellows, into which she sank her claws in vicious frenzy. 
Finding that she could not drag either of us off, she 

65 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

desisted from the attack. So I attached my linen 
thread to the shutter, dropped the spool to the ground, 
descended, and laid my line of communication to a tree 
some rods away, behind which I hid. 

After a little investigation the owl returned to her 
nest and settled down right before the staring lens. I 
could now have pulled the thread but for the fact that, 
owing to the very dull light, I had been obliged to set 
the shutter for a timed exposure of one second, and the 
trees were swaying violently, lashed by the gale. In 
order to see clearly if there was a lull, I crept up close 
to the owl tree unobserved and waited, thread in hand, 
for the desired opportunity. Half an hour passed, 
without a moment in which there was any chance of 
success. While thus waiting, I was treated to a deli- 
cious little episode of owl life. The male owl, a little 
smaller than the efficient guardian of his children, 
sailed suddenly through the shrubbery and alighted 
upon a branch near the ground, hardly ten feet from 
me. He had seen the camera and was all alert. In 
one of his fluffy paws dangled a mouse, held by the 
head, which he had evidently just caught and was 
bringing to feed his family. He did not see me, and in 
a moment, satisfied that the camera was harmless, he 
flitted up to the nest. His mate arose to welcome him 
and took the mouse, whereupon he flew off energetically 
in search of another. Being so far underneath the 
nest I could not see just what happened, but the 
mother was evidently tearing the mouse, dividing it up 

66 




Young Long-eared Owl hiding. " Making themselves look like dead stubs " (p. 67) . 




Young Long-eared Owls. "Replaced in nest" (p. 67). 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

amongst her hungry young, who were moving about 
actively, each ready for its share. This took two or 
three minutes, and they all settled down as before. It 
was fairly maddening not to have light for a snapshot 
of the six owls as the mouse was being delivered over. 
And now, as there seemed to be no prospect of any- 
thing better, I made several exposures on the old owl 
incubating, and on the young, before I removed the 
camera, all of which proved to be blurred by the swaying 
of the trees. 

The next morning was clear and cold and I was 
there at five o'clock, but the old owl would not return 
to the nest in the time at my disposal. My chum at 
length came and fairly dragged me away. We had to 
drive thirty miles to take a train to a point further 
south. A week later we returned and the first thing I 
did was to visit the owls. The nest was empty, alas. 
But, as the old owl was "yowling" about, I made 
search and found the youngsters roosting in the trees 
within a radius of ten rods. As long as they were not 
handled they remained in their "hiding pose," motion- 
less, erect, feathers drawn tightly together, making 
themselves look like dead stubs and blending wonder- 
fully with their surroundings. I took various pictures 
of them in the hiding places, as well as when replaced 
in the nest. The old bird was still rather aggressively 
inclined, yet it was very hard to get her picture. Finally 
I noticed that she often alighted upon a dead treetop 
before swooping. So I rigged my cumbersome tele- 

67 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

photo apparatus up in the tree, focused it upon the 
branch where I expected she would come, and waited. 
For a long time she went everywhere but to the right 
branch, but at length she alighted just where I wanted 
her and was still for exactly the required half second. 
Just as the shutter closed the restless head turned, but 
photographically the owl was mine ! 

Whenever I think of those Long-eared Owls, I laugh 
to recall the vision of a man up a tree, a savage owl 
trying to lift his scalp, making such a tremendous wail- 
ing and screeching that a party of dogs lifted up their 
voices and finally came and stood, howling, too, around 
the tree, until some men from the neighboring farm, 
amazed at the commotion, joined in the assembly, and 
I, to "save my face" and avert the suspicion of insanity, 
was compelled to add my voice to the tumult in explana- 
tion of the comedy. 

There is only one other large owl which we are very 
likely to meet, the Short-eared Owl, a bird about the 
size of the Long-eared, but without noticeable ear- 
tufts. It generally nests further north, but in autumn 
we are likely to flush it from the ground as we tramp 
over marshes and meadows, or sometimes moist, bushy 
pastures. Because it likes such places it is often called 
the Marsh Owl. I have found their nests in the grass 
out on the wild prairies of the Northwest. 

In the Middle States and in the South one may find 
the singular looking monkey-faced Barn Owl, which 
hides itself away by daytime in hollow trees or old 

68 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

buildings. But the only other common owl is the little 
Screech Owl. Were it not for its tremendous cries, 
resembling the trilling of the tree toad, which are often 
heard even in towns or small cities, one might well 
suppose that the bird is very scarce indeed. The Great 
Horned and Barred Owls do not mind the broad day- 
light, but our little friend Screecher prefers to hide in a 
hollow tree, or even a building until the dusk of even- 
ing. If discovered by day, it appears dazed and torpid, 
and generally refuses to come out of its hole, unless 
dragged by force. I have often found it in winter by 
examining the ground or snow under woodpeckers' 
holes, or in hollow limbs, in orchards or woods. When 
I find rounded masses of bones and hair, called pellets, 
the indigestible remains of its food which the owl 
throws up, I climb to the hole above, put in my hand, 
and pull out the owl, which usually is too sleepy to 
make much resistance. 

One day in early autumn I took a walk out into the 
country. At the edge of some woods I noticed an old 
apple tree with a hollow trunk and a hole about as high 
up as my head. I thought it a good place for a Screech 
Owl, and so I went and looked in. Something was in 
there sure enough, for I could see two round shining 
orbs. After my eyes became used to the darkness I 
could see that they were the eyes of a Screech Owl, so 
I put in my hand and found I could just reach it. It 
did not struggle or bite as I pulled it out, and I put it in 
my pocket and rode home with it on my bicycle, to 

69 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

keep it awhile as a pet. Captive owls do not get very 
tame, but they feed heartily on raw meat and do well 
if they have room enough to exercise. 

Another time I was taking a bicycle ride when I came 
across a boy who had caught one of these owls in the 
same way in his orchard. I happened to want one then 
to study, so I paid him for it, put the owl in my pocket, 
and, taking the precaution to pin down the lapel, 
started homeward. When I was about halfway back, 
I felt to see how the owl was getting on, and found, to 
my chagrin, that it had escaped! 

Last winter one of these owls spent his sleepy days 
in a hole in a tree right on the main street of the village, 
about twenty-five feet from the ground. At dusk it 
would poke its head out of the hole and gaze around 
for awhile, then crawl out and perch on a limb nearby 
for a few moments before flying off on a mousing 
expedition or to catch a fat English Sparrow — for its 
breakfast, I suppose we would call it, as our night is 
the owl's day. The boys soon discovered the owl's 
retreat, and would throw snowballs at the hole, to 
make the big-eyed bird come to the door. It would 
only look out, though, toward night. Some of the boys 
were for climbing up to catch it, but Ned persuaded 
them to let it alone. 

In bitter winter weather the poor little owls had a 
hard time of it, for they, as well as some other kinds of 
owls, do not migrate very much, and they crawl in 
almost anywhere to try to keep warm. One of them 

70 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

used to occupy my next door neighbor's bird box. One 
Sunday morning the sexton was starting a fire in the 
church furnace when he discovered a poor little Screech 
Owl, blinking in the smoke, and pulled it out just in 
time to save its life. It well deserved to be spared this 
or any disaster, for it is a fine thing for a town to have 
resident Screech Owls to keep down the English Spar- 
row nuisance. There is a village not far from where I 
live where one winter a Screech Owl stayed all the time 
in a thick spruce right by the post office and ate so 
many sparrows that by spring there were hardly any 
left. They are great mousers, too, as are most kinds 
of owls, and no one ought to kill them. The one 
exception is the Great Horned Owl, which is liable to 
make great inroads on poultry, if it once finds its way 
to their quarters, though generally it stays in the woods 
and feeds mostly on rabbits, skunks, and, unfortunately, 
the Ruffed Grouse. 

A friend of mine has a nice aviary of domesticated 
wild geese and ducks, a tract of meadow close to the 
brook beside his home, fenced in with wire, but not 
covered overhead. This summer he began to lose his 
ducks ; every morning one was missing. Finally, when 
he found a beautiful Pintail drake dead and partly eaten 
he decided that the intruder must be the Great Horned 
Owl which hooted off on the mountain. So he put up 
a fifteen-foot pole at one corner of the yard, with a steel 
trap set on top of it. The owl will always alight on 
some commanding perch and look around before 

71 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

pouncing. He expected that the owl would alight on 
this stake in the trap, and sure enough, at daybreak the 
next morning, the guilty owl was hanging ignobly from 
the pole, caught by one foot. A charge of shot put an 
end to its thieving career. But this is the exception, 
and most owls deserve better treatment. It would not 
be fair to hate all boys because one boy was mischievous, 
would it, Ned? 

The Screech Owl lays four or five eggs, which are 
white, like all other owl's eggs, about the middle of 
April, at the bottom of a cavity in a tree. It likes an 
old orchard very well, but is just as likely to locate in 
the woods. Seldom is there any sign of occupancy 
about the hole, and the owl will not show herself, how- 
ever much one may pound the tree. The nest may be 
right by one's home, but it is hard to find. The only 
way I know is to keep looking in likely holes, especially 
in a neighborhood where the owls are heard at night. 
I have found several nests, but only because I looked in 
several thousand holes. The brooding owl is as tame 
as a sitting hen, and, like them, some will peck and 
some will not, when you pull them off their eggs. The 
young are queer little fellows, at first covered with 
whitish down, which changes to a soft gray plumage. 
Later, when fully feathered, it may be either red or 
gray in general hue, and we do not know any satis- 
factory reason for this variation, any more than why 
some people have brown hair and others red. 

There is another little owl, even smaller than the 

72 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

Screech Owl, which we may happen upon some time. 
It is called the Saw-whet Owl because its love song in 
the spring reminds one of the rasping of sharpening a 
saw. Most specimens are seen in fall or winter, in 
bushy pastures or cedar swamp thickets, or are found 
dead in severe weather about houses, whither they have 
been driven in a last vain hope of finding a mouse to 
keep them from starving. 

A hunter whom I knew caught one of them in a steel 
trap set for mink in the woods in March. He had the 
little sprite in a room in his house, where it was flying 
around actively, alighting on the furniture. I was glad 
enough when he offered it to me, and took it home in a 
box, to photograph and study it. The next day I 
should have secured a series of pictures of it from life, 
but a furious easterly gale was raging with a pouring 
rain, and it was very dark. As the conditions were 
most unfavorable, I waited till the next day, and was 
sorry that I had not done the best I could even in the 
storm, for the little creature lay dead under its perch, 
and I have never yet had another chance to photograph 
one. 

Had I begun to hunt birds with the camera a little 
sooner than I did, I should have had a splendid oppor- 
tunity to picture this rather rare owl, for I was so 
fortunate as to find a nest eleven years ago. The bird 
usually goes further north to breed, and this was the 
only nest I ever have seen. I described the adventure 
quite fully in "Wild Wings," but may say that it was 

73 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

in a Flicker's hole, in a pine stub, and the bird was so 
tame that I could have done almost anything with her. 
She had five incubated eggs on the eighteenth of April. 

However, I did manage to take a picture of a Saw- 
whet. Three of us were out for a tramp and came to a 
horse shed at the edge of the woods. It was open, so I 
looked in, and there sat a tiny Saw-whet Owl on a beam 
close by. The owl and I were face to face, and we 
both just stood and stared at each other in blank amaze- 
ment. Presently I recovered my presence of mind and 
backed off to get my camera. But the owl likewise 
came to itself, and, flying across the stable, alighted at 
a hole in the partition which led into an outer shed 
which was entirely open on one side. If once it got 
out there, it was a "goner" for me. 

Seizing my camera and tripod which I had stood up 
outside the door, in as few words as possible I told 
Ned what was up and sent him around on the run to 
keep the Owl from flying through. When he appeared 
the owl faced backward toward me, seemingly un- 
decided what to do. Calling to Ned to wait, I planted 
the camera in the greatest hurry, focused on the bird, 
and exposed two plates, long-timed, of course, in such a 
dark place, but fortunately the queer little subject kept 
quite still. 

Just as this was done, the owl decided to flee from 
Ned, and came back into the shed. Ned stopped up 
the hole, and then we all tried to catch Mr. Saw-whet, 
one of us guarding the entrance, as there was no door. 

74 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

I threw my cap over the owl and it fell to the floor. 
We each made a grab for it and there was a general 
mix-up, but somehow the bird which so many people 
think is blind by daylight dodged through the array of 
legs and hands, flying out of the door. "Well, I never !" 
I exclaimed in disgust. "What made you so awkward, 
Ned?" "Yes, how about yourself?" he retorted. 

Severe winter weather is liable to bring certain rare 
boreal owls to us from the North. The best known 
and most beautiful of these is the Snowy Owl, that 
splendid white bird which we associate with the polar 
bear and icebergs. There is apt to be a flight of them 
in early December, if at all, and one is liable to meet a 
specimen anywhere inland, though the seacoast is the 
best sort of region to find them. I have met but one in 
my life, on a salt marsh. Another greater rarity is the 
Great Gray Owl, a Northern species closely related to 
the Barred Owl, but larger. I have never seen it alive. 

The severe winter of 1906-7 brought to us many 
Northern birds. On the twelfth of November, 1906, a 
lady was driving along a road in the outskirts of the 
town where I live. She came upon an Indian woman 
who was examining something lying in the road. It 
was a small owl which had somehow perished. Think- 
ing it a "cute" little thing, she brought it to me to have 
it mounted. I was not at home, but met her at the 
post office. "Could I get you to stuff it for me?" she 
asked. "Really," said I, "I don't see how I can. I am 
just going away, and am very busy." But she looked so 

75 



THE BIRD OF NIGHT 

disappointed that I relented and took it, knowing that 
it would keep a long time in the cold weather. It was 
getting dark and the owl appeared to be a Saw-whet. 
I stuffed it in my pocket, and on reaching home tossed 
it up on a shelf in the woodshed, where it remained for 
weeks. Finally I got it down one afternoon and was 
at once impressed by its size, for I now saw that it was 
nearly as big as a Screech Owl. "That's no Saw-whet," 
my wife exclaimed, as I rushed for the reference books. 
"Richardson's Owl!" I shouted. "What a find!" It 
proved to be the second one ever taken in Connecticut, 
the only other having been recorded by Dr. William 
Wood, away back in 1861. To this day I have not 
gotten over the sensation which comes over me when I 
think of how near I came to missing such a rare find. 



76 



CHAPTER V 

STRANGE BED-FELLOWS 

{Cuckoos and Kingfishers) 

I CAN'T see for the life of me," said Ned one day, as 
we were driving home after photographing a 
Black-billed Cuckoo on her nest, "why in the 
world the scientists have put the cuckoos and the king- 
fishers together in the same group in their classification. 
Why, anyone can see that they are as different as day 
is from night. They both wear feathers and fly, and 
that is about all the likeness I can see!" 

"We mustn't be hard on the poor scientists," I replied. 
"They have a hard nut to crack. There are a number 
of groups of species which are so different that they do 
not know what to do with them. Formerly they just 
gave it up and dumped them all into one miscellaneous 
rag bag — Picarian or woodpecker-like birds they called 
them, nicknaming them after the largest of the groups. 
Now, however, they have found a better home for each 
of the poor orphans, all except the unfortunate cuckoos 
and kingfishers and some foreign tribes, so they fixed 
up a smaller catch-all and named it after the cuckoos 
—Coccyges, the Greek for cuckoos." 

77 



STRANGE BED-FELLOWS 

"Well," said Ned, "I should think that such strange 
bed-fellows would get to fighting, but I suppose that 
they don't realize that they are in such close quarters." 

This scientific discourse grew so absorbing that, as 
we approached the railroad track I forgot to "look out 
for the engine," as the old signs used to say. Just as 
we were about to cross, I saw the evening express train 
swiftly rushing down upon us, only a few rods away. I 
had to think quickly what to do. If I stopped right 
there, the horse would certainly shy down the embank- 
ment, though, of course, we could jump out. But I 
thought we could get across barely in time, so I plied 
the whip, and with a leap we went flying over, having 
just a few yards to spare as the train thundered past. 
We were so much excited that we forgot all about the 
Coccyges and set to berating the engineer for not having 
blown the whistle on approaching the grade crossing. 
But birds are very fascinating, and ornithology was not 
knocked out of us for very long, though we resolved to 
put prudence ahead of it in future when crossing the 
railroad track. And now that we are safely escaped 
we will return to the cuckoos. 

The nest which I had just found was in a dense 
thicket of bushes, a few rods back from the road which 
passed near the pond, and about opposite the latter. 
It was the seventh of June, and we were tramping about 
in a large tract of scrub and briers, searching for birds' 
nests. For some time we had had no especial luck, 
until, as I poked my head into this particular thicket, 

78 



STRANGE BEDFELLOWS 

there right before me I saw a flimsy nest of twigs and 
stems. On it sat a Black-billed Cuckoo, gazing at me 
in alarm with her large hazel eyes which were bordered 
by red eyelids. When Ned came up I made signs to 
him to keep very quiet, so he looked on while I set up 
the small, long-focus camera on the tripod, with the 
eighteen-inch lens. Fortunately there was a small 
opening through the bushes to the nest, with nothing 
much to obstruct the view, and, after taking one small 
picture of the bird from where I was, to make sure of 
something, I pushed the tripod and camera nearer and 
nearer. At each halt I made another exposure and 
secured a larger image of the bird on the plate. Of 
course I was very careful not to rustle the leaves or 
step on a dry twig or make any sudden motion. The 
bird actually let me photograph her within four feet 
before she slipped off the nest and disappeared in the 
shrubbery. No wonder she was tame, for it was just 
hatching time. There was one pipped egg in the nest, 
and one newly hatched young one. When it had 
crawled out of the shell, it had taken with it the rounded 
end, which it wore on its head as a close-fitting blue 
skull-cap, and it certainly looked very comical. While 
I was at work with the camera, Ned's sharp eyes spied 
out a Wood Thrush sitting on her nest in a low sapling 
just outside the brier thicket, not more than twelve 
feet from the cuckoo's nest. 

A few days later we visited Mrs. Cuckoo again, and 
found her brooding. She was in a better position, with 

79 



STRANGE BED-FELLOWS 

the whole of her long tail showing, so I took some more 
pictures of her, as before. When she left, I photo- 
graphed the two youngsters in their rude, hard cradle. 
Ugly brats they were at this stage, with great ungainly 
beaks, all out of proportion to their size, and bristling 
with pin feathers. The nest, as usual, was almost flat 
on top, and somewhat tilted over besides. It always 
seems a wonder if the young cuckoos succeed in hanging 
on to the nest. That they sometimes do not, I know 
for a fact, for soon afterward I found this nest deserted, 
and a few years before I had watched another nest of 
this species in the same locality, down by the pond in 
a bushy swamp. 

This nest also had two small young, which, after a 
severe thunder shower and wind, disappeared. Their 
home was a most unusual one. It was in an ordinary 
situation, six or eight feet up a sapling. But near by 
in the swamp was a willow bush which was just getting 
past its flowering by the middle of May, when the 
cuckoos began to build. Instead of picking up sticks 
and making a platform so frail that one could see the 
eggs through it from below, these birds had constructed 
a big, soft, nest, very deep, though flat on top, almost 
entirely out of willow catkins and down. They de- 
served better fortune than to have their young blown 
out of such a palatial nursery — for a cuckoo! — and 
drowned. But this is the lot of many a young bird, 
even from the best of bird homes. 

We have two kinds of cuckoos — Black-billed and 

80 




Nest of Black-billed Cuckoo. Showing the newly hatched young 

cap (p. 79). 


;ster with its blue 












r^-- -.TisawBr^ 


JhB^^^Mhhb 


■ la HKvCsk 2 flnf> 


r M>^ 


Mais 



Young Black-billed Cuckoos in nest. "Bristling with pin-feathers" (p. 80). 



STRANGE BED-FELLOWS 

Yellow-billed, which are hard to tell apart, unless one 
gets very near them, which is not easy to do. They are 
shy, retiring birds, and keep mostly in the thick foliage. 
Bird students seldom have a better chance to examine 
a cuckoo in life and see how useful a tribe these birds 
are than did a certain company of young ladies. I was 
giving a bird lecture at Bradford Academy, Mass., and 
the next morning took an early bird walk with a party 
of the girls and a teacher. Beside the path was a wild 
cherry tree which was stripped bare of foliage and 
contained the nest of the despoilers, some sort of canker 
worm or caterpillar. Perched beside this was a Black- 
billed Cuckoo, breakfasting. We were all within 
twenty feet of it, and watched it for some minutes eat 
worm after worm, which it took from the nest. If we 
could only raise cuckoos enough, we might conquer the 
gypsy moth, that most expensive pest. 

Were it not for the loud, harsh "cow-cow" notes of 
the cuckoos, we certainly should think them much 
rarer than they are. But they are both all too scarce, 
and generally the Yellow-billed kind has seemed to me 
the rarer of the two. When I have hunted for their 
nests I usually have had no success. But now and then 
I have happened upon a nest of either kind when I was 
least expecting it. Though I have found more nests 
of the Yellow-billed in old, retired orchards, I have also 
found the Black-billed breeding in such places, and I 
am not sure that they differ materially in the sorts of 
places which they frequent. 

81 



STRANGE BED-FELLOWS 

The very opposite in temperament is the Belted King- 
fisher, our only species of this interesting sub-order. 
No bird is more conspicuous than this most royal 
fisherman of all our small land birds, sounding its loud 
rattle as it flies over land or stream, or perching on 
some conspicuous stub by the shore from which it can 
watch for the small fish to rise to the surface. Suddenly 
it plunges headlong into the water with a loud splash, 
and, emerging, flies off with a triumphant announce- 
ment, like the hen, which tries to publish world-wide 
the glorious fact that she has laid an egg. 

Sometimes, though rarely, the kingfishers are seen 
in the land of ice and snow during the winter, but at 
any rate they come back early, toward the end of 
March or in early April. Before long they get to work 
digging their nesting burrows in some gravel bank not 
far from water, though not necessarily right by the 
shore. Often they choose a cut in a road or railway, 
or a spot where a farmer has excavated for sand or 
gravel. They are great diggers and go in as much as 
six feet, with turns in the tunnel, too, to avoid rocks. 
At the end there is a wider chamber or pocket where 
six or seven good-sized white eggs are laid on the earth, 
surrounded by an ever-increasing pile of fish bones, 
the remains of the regular fish dinners. 

In years past I had seen various kingfishers' holes, 
and had dug one out to examine the nest and young, 
but I had no photographs. So, when I realized that 
a certain chapter must be written and needed king- 

82 



STRANGE BED-FELLOWS 

fisher adornments, I had to hustle to get some pictures, 
before it was too late in the season. Ned was a good 
fellow to consult on such important business, and he 
remembered two places where he had seen kingfisher 
burrows, so we rounded them up at once. The first 
was in a pasture, where road makers had dug out 
gravel, and left a steep bank. There was no burrow 
there this year, though later in the season I saw where 
the pair had nested, in a bank about half a mile further 
on, by the roadside. The other location was near the 
pond, where the railroad had been cut through. It 
did not take long to discover two round clear-cut holes 
of just the right size — kingfishers' work without a 
doubt. One did not go in very far, as the birds had 
struck rock. So they had tried again a few feet away, 
and this one was evidently complete, for it went in 
further than I could reach. No birds were in sight, 
yet I felt sure it was a new burrow. 

It was so late in the season that I feared the young 
had already flown. So the next day, the twenty-sixth 
of June, as I was about to drive by this spot with my 
wife and baby girl, I took along a shovel, and hitched 
the horse by the roadside at the nearest point to the 
burrow, telling my wife — with some misgivings — that 
it would only take me a few minutes to dig in far 
enough to find out whether the nest was occupied, and 
if it was I would take the photographs later. I took 
the camera along, though, to photograph the site be- 
fore I disfigured it. After taking the picture, I started 

83 



STRANGE BED-FELLOWS 

to dig, when suddenly a kingfisher popped out its head 
and was just preparing to fly away, when I grabbed it. 
"Aha!" thought I, "here is the mother bird, and I'll 
have her picture too!" Just then another bird came 
out of the burrow, almost like a cannon ball, and flew 
off before I could try to stop it. So the father bird was 
in there also? Then, to my astonishment out went 
another, and then another tried it, but this one I caught, 
putting both into my camera case. A regular eruption 
of kingfishers was in progress, a miniature Vesuvius 
in action. Really I cannot tell how many kingfishers 
came out; I lost count in the excitement; but I think 
it was eight, possibly only seven. Of course I knew 
now that this was the brood of young ones, fully grown 
and fledged, in beautiful plumage. I had caught four; 
the others flew over to the pond, all but one 'which 
alighted on the railroad track. Fearing that a train 
would come along and kill it, I tried to drive it off, but 
it kept flying along the rail and alighting on it, and I 
had to chase it a quarter of a mile before it flew off to 
one side. 

Here was a pretty quandary. A heavy thunder 
shower was fast approaching, the wife and baby were 
there in the woods, but if I left the young kingfishers, 
it would probably be all up with my kingfisher photo- 
graphs for this chapter.. So I thought I would get a 
few, any way, and hurried to focus the camera on the 
entrance to the burrow, after which I put one of the 
young back into the hole. Immediately it tried to get 

84 




Young Kingfisher leaving nest-burrow. " Immediately it tried to get out " (p. 84) . 




Young Kingfishers. "On an overturned tree-stump" (p. 85). 



STRANGE BED-FELLOWS 

out again, but the lens caught it, and then my hand, 
this operation being repeated several times. Then I 
put two of the lively youngsters up on an overturned 
tree stump and roots, which the workmen had dug out 
when they straightened the railroad. Like most young 
birds, they acted in an exasperated manner, delaying 
me while the shower came nearer and nearer. I was 
determined, now, to get this picture at almost any cost, 
knowing that with a top buggy my family would not 
be quite drowned. Finally I made my last of several ex- 
posures just as the first of the big drops began to fall. 
Under the rubber cloth I packed away my camera. 
Then I put the young birds back into the burrow, 
waiting a moment to drive them back as they tried to 
come out. Then, gathering up my things, I raced for 
the buggy in the increasing downpour. The family 
were not there. In alarm at the approach of the 
tempest they had put for the next farmhouse, where I 
found them when the storm had nearly spent itself. 
They were none the worse for it, nor was I, though wet 
and plastered with mud. But I am glad that I did it, 
because I have the pictures to show for my pains. 

This episode amused Ned very much. He wished 
he had been present to see it all, and I certainly had 
earnestly wished that he was there to help me manage 
those contrary young birds. I could have finished 
then before it rained. Sometimes, in photographing 
birds it is best to be alone, but again an assistant is an 
exceedingly great convenience. But Ned had his 

85 



STRANGE BED-FELLOWS 

innings before very long, and had the fun all to himself 
at that. He was fishing on the river bank, sitting 
among some nettles. A very small fish got hooked, 
and before taking it off he allowed it to stay in the 
water and watched it as it tried to get away. But 
other sharp eyes were watching, too. A kingfisher 
had been flying about, catching a fish now and then. 
It spied the fish that was hooked and became so in- 
terested that it forgot Ned. What should it do, before 
deciding to pounce on the fish, but alight on the fish- 
pole which Ned was holding, out near the end. Ned 
was so surprised that he almost dropped the pole, but, 
recovering his presence of mind, hung on and enjoyed 
the strange proceeding. The bird looked big and felt 
very heavy, so much so that after about a minute, 
which seemed like quite a long time, Ned could not 
help dropping the pole a little, and the eager fisher, 
which was about to dive after the fish, became alarmed 
and flew away. I showed Ned a stuffed kingfisher, 
but he says that his kingfisher was larger and hand- 
somer, better in every way. 



86 



CHAPTER VI 

KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

(Woodpeckers) 

NED," said I one day, "I wish you'd keep your eyes 
open for a good woodpecker's hole situated so 
that I might be able to get some pictures of the 
old bird at the entrance. You know we've got pictures 
of some of them eating suet, but I haven't anything 
about their nesting, and we must have it for the book." 

"What kind you want?" he asked, stopping for a 
moment his operations on his broken butterfly net. 

"Why, an Arctic Three-toed, or a Pileated, would 
suit me tiptop," I ventured. 

"Oh, you go chase yourself!" exclaimed the fancier 
of the "butterfly etude." (Ned was as fond of music 
as of birds and butterflies.) "Do you think I'm going 
to climb the North Pole to find those rare things? 
Give me something easier." 

"All right," said I. "I'll relent and give you the 
commonest kind there is, the fellow so well known that 
he has any number of names — Flicker, Yellow-hammer, 
High-hole, or, if you want to be more swell, Golden- 
winged Woodpecker. Do you think you could find 
one?" 

87 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

"I'm sure I can find Flickers' nests," he responded, 
but maybe they'll all be up in rotten stubs a mile high. 
"But I'll see what I can do." 

So we both were rivals as to who would do the best. 
I found the first, because I was out the most, while 
poor Ned was shut up in school studying Latin, which 
he doesn't enjoy overmuch, yet finds it useful in learn- 
ing the scientific names of the birds. I tell him that 
if he doesn't get his Latin lessons those big long bird 
names will stick in his throat. It needs considerable 
vocal lubrication from classical study to call a Red- 
headed Woodpecker a Melanerpes erythrocephalus, but 
it can be done, for Ned has accomplished it. But we 
will let him escape from school this fourteenth of May 
and drive five miles to see a few hawks' nests — Broad- 
winged, Cooper's, and Red-tailed, all within less than 
a mile, and incidentally my Flicker's hole. The bird 
was still digging it out, and as we approached we could 
see some long thing sticking out and jerking up and 
down like a pump handle. It was the Flicker's tail! 
She had chiseled into the chestnut stub with her power- 
ful bill deep enough to hide all of her but her tail. 
And she was working hard, too, but she did not keep 
it up long enough to violate the rules of the labor 
union— "the I. O. K. C"— Ned and I call it, or the 
"Independent Order of the Knights of the Chisel." 
They do not allow even an eight-hour day on a house 
contract, but on the other hand compel a frightfully 
long service in chiseling for the festive grub. This 

88 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

bird was building only about ten feet up, at the edge 
of the Cooper's Hawk grove, and, though there was 
no other tree close by on which to rig the camera, I 
thought I could manage somehow to get a picture, if 
nothing better turned up. 

But we discovered plenty more nests. One day I 
found as many as half a dozen in a tract of woods 
where the trees were dying from an excess of water. 
Unfortunately every one of them was high up. Another 
nest was in the midst of unusual life and activity, 
though in lonely woods well up the side of a hill. The 
Flickers had dug a hole twenty feet up a dead chestnut 
stub. Fifteen feet higher, at the top, a pair of flying 
squirrels had young in the Flicker's last year hole. At 
the base of the stub, under some rocks, were two en- 
trances to an occupied fox burrow. Evidently the 
young foxes played there, for the ground was thoroughly 
trampled, and at one front door were turkey bones 
and feathers and some fresh green leaves. Within a 
few rods a pair of Oven-birds had a nest on the ground, 
surprisingly well concealed, for even the foxes had not 
found it. Besides this, a Red-eyed Vireo couple had 
built in the fork of a sapling, just out of Reynard's 
reach, and a somber-hued female Scarlet Tanager 
brooded higher up, out on the extended branch of an 
oak. 

But after all Ned beat me, for he found the best nest 
of all, and handy to home at that. It was in an apple 
tree in an orchard, on the west side where it had some 

89 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

of the late afternoon sun, up in the spreading part of 
the tree, with branches in front of the hole where a 
camera could be remarkably well hidden. So, one 
bright afternoon, I made a visit there. Madam Flicker 
flew out, and I screwed up the small camera in the 
favorable spot, covering it with green branches, and 
then, having attached the thread, hid behind the next 
apple tree. In a short time I heard the Flicker's 
"yawp." She flew from a tree near by directly to the 
entrance of the hole, where she paused for an instant, 
giving me a good chance for the exposure, and then 
went in to her eggs without noticing the camera, or 
paying more than momentary heed to the click of the 
shutter. 

I walked off for a few minutes to let her warm her 
eggs, and then, as I approached, a Flicker flew from 
the tree. I changed the plate and then waited and 
waited, but no bird came back. This was puzzling, 
for everything seemed to be right, and I was pretty 
well concealed. At last, just as I was about to go to 
see if anything was wrong, a Flicker stuck its head out 
of the nest hole, and then withdrew it, after I had pulled 
the thread and got a good picture. I went to the camera 
but no bird flew out. "Can it be," I thought, "that 
the bird was a full-fledged young one, for it is only the 
eighth of June?" However, I decided to make sure, 
so I put my hand and arm into the hole. I could feel a 
bird, but it did not peck or bite, so I drew it out by the 
bill, though it hung back some. It was the mother 

90 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

bird. After stroking her I opened my hand and away 
she went. Now I could just touch eggs at the bottom, 
as deep down as I could reach. 

The picture of the bird by the hole was not very good, 
as the side of her toward the camera was shaded, so I 
tried again, and set a mirror on the grass throwing a 
strong beam on the hole and below it. Now I was in 
for all sorts of trouble. The bird was afraid of the 
mirror and would not brave it for quite a while, though 
she did in time. Meanwhile the sun changed position 
and the reflection fell too low. When I went and 
altered it the bird saw me and stayed away longer. 
Then, as I waited I noticed that the light was cut off 
and returned in rather an erratic manner. I was down 
the slope of the hill and could not see the mirror, so 
crept up higher to investigate, and was surprised and 
amused to see a cow standing with her head lowered, 
gazing threateningly at the imaginary cow before her. 
I really think that in another moment she would have 
*' tossed " her likeness had I not driven her off. Some- 
how she had managed to step over the thread without 
touching it, which was fortunate, as she might have 
wrecked the shutter before breaking the strong linen 
thread. She was bound, though, to come back and 
get satisfaction from the supposed bovine usurper, so 
I had to keep driving her back. The bird returned 
several times, though the light was never where I 
wanted it. I tried short timed exposures, but in each 
the bird proved to have moved, for the young, now 

91 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

hatched, were clamoring for food, making that horrible 
buzzing noise which sounds like a nest of snakes. 
Naked and scrawny, they looked as hideous as they 
sounded. But I secured one instantaneous exposure 
on the bird in dull light, which, though very thin, 
printed quite well on contrasty developing paper, and 
was the best which I secured. 

I waited a few days more till I thought the youngsters 
would have some feathers, and went to photograph 
them. No buzzing greeted me, and I was shocked. 
Putting my hand into the hole, I drew out the putrid 
body of one of the young, without feathers. Appar- 
ently the others, unable to endure this horrible condi- 
tion, had climbed out before their full time, or else they 
had grown faster than I had supposed possible. But 
what should I do for photographs of young woodpeckers 
for my series? It was now so late in the season that I 
feared that all young Flickers had left their nests. As 
soon as I could, I made the round of most of the nests 
I had previously seen. In every case I was too late. 
Then I heard of a nest on someone's front lawn, in a 
maple tree, where very recently the young were looking 
out and being fed by their parents. That very evening 
I drove to the place, and to my joy found that the young 
were there and in just the right condition to photograph. 

The next morning, July fifth, I was early at work. 
The hole was twenty feet up the elm, an enlarged knot 
hole. The young drew back when I tried to get hold 
of them. The hole was too small for my hand, and 

92 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

the wood too hard for my knife, so I borrowed a dull 
hatchet and finally, standing on the spikes of my 
climbing irons, with great difficulty managed to enlarge 
the entrance enough to reach in. There were three 
young, which I put in my creel, and a dead one full of 
maggots. What a horrible time young woodpeckers 
must have in these pestilential holes! I noticed, 
though, that they kept up from the bottom, and clung 
to the sides near the entrance, thus being able to stand 
it — in more senses than one. 

At first when I tried to pose them before the camera 
— clinging to a tree trunk, on a post, or ranged along a 
branch — they w T ere very unruly. But in time, like 
most young birds, they finally wearied of trying to 
escape and submitted to the inevitable. One was 
particularly lively and troublesome, doubtless the one 
which got the most food. The people of the house had 
been watching the feeding process, and had noticed 
that one youngster seemed to cling by the entrance for 
hours at a time and block the others, getting most of 
the feeding from the stupid or partial parents. Having 
photographed them, I put them back in the hole, after 
cleaning it out and partly filling it with grass. The 
old birds had been quite concerned and soon one of 
them came sliding down the trunk, making a rather 
pretty plaintive whining call which set the youngsters 
almost frantic, for they well knew what it meant. She 
was a little shy of the group watching her, but she soon 
went and fed the first one that stuck out his head. It 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

was the smallest of them which I had stationed at the 
entrance that he might get the start of his tyrannical 
stronger brother. 

Ned was too deep in Fourth of July and its aftermath 
to come with me. He wanted to photograph them, 
though, so next day we made another visit, but the 
tender-hearted mistress of the place was so fearful that 
the old birds would get frightened off by too much 
photographing that we gave it up, and drove on to 
more exciting adventures, which shall later be described. 

As our minds were on woodpeckers, it was but 
natural that we should talk about them. Ned asked 
me to tell him about some of the kinds which he had 
never seen alive, and I was willing enough, for it is 
always pleasant to share with others the enjoyment we 
have had with the birds. Besides the Flicker, the only 
others which were familiar to Ned were the Downy and 
Hairy Woodpeckers, both of which, especially the 
former, are common with us all the year around. 
Besides these he has seen the beautiful one with varie- 
gated plumage, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, which 
we have only as a spring and fall migrant and never 
seems very common, though they say that plenty of 
them nest in the forests of northern New England. 
This is the kind which bores so many small round holes 
in apple trees, sometimes for finding grubs, but also to 
drink the sap. 

Then there is the Red-headed Woodpecker, red, 
white and blue, a gaudy bird, with its flaming brilliant 

94 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

red head and neck. This spring about the middle of 
May, a pair of them put in their appearance at a farm 
some two miles from where I live. They seemed to 
like it and stayed about the row of fine old sugar 
maples and other shade trees along the street. Ned and 
I did hope that they would remain for the summer, but 
in a few days they grew restless and moved on. Years 
and years ago they used to be quite plenty in New 
England, but now they are rare and we must go further 
south and west to find them. When I was a boy, a 
flock of them came to the suburbs of Boston and stayed 
all the fall, and a few well into the winter. I could 
almost always find them in a certain grove of nice large 
oaks, and I improved this only opportunity I ever had 
to know them till I extended my bird searchings to 
other sections. 

There is another of this gentry of the chisel which 
has mostly disappeared from the middle districts where 
it was once well known, the great black and white 
Pileated Woodpecker, which is as big as a crow. It is 
common yet in the north woods, and, curiously, in the 
extreme south. I have met it in Florida, and it seemed 
strange enough to see these great climbers, which 
seemed too large to be woodpeckers. They make a 
prodigious noise with their hammering, and tear off 
great strips of bark from decaying trees. They are 
only rarely seen in southern New England. I know 
two reliable people who have seen them in western 
Connecticut quite recently; one instance was of a 

95 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

specimen in winter, and the other of a pair actually 
breeding. 

There is always a bare possibility in winter of running 
across one of the rare northern woodpeckers charac- 
terized by having but three toes on each foot. Of these 
there are two kinds, the Arctic Three-toed and the 
American Three-toed Woodpeckers. Though I never 
have had the luck to meet one alive, I look carefully at 
every woodpecker I see in winter, hoping that it may 
prove to be one of these. A very few have been recorded 
south of the northern tier of States, and some fine day 
Ned or I may be among the fortunate discoverers. 

We began this chapter with a common woodpecker, 
so we will end it by telling of two familiar birds which 
are so much alike that many people see no difference 
between them — the Hairy and the Downy Woodpeckers. 
These are the black and white spotted ones, so often 
seen about our homes, especially in the winter, when 
hunger and cold drive them to us for succor. They 
are almost exactly alike in plumage, but the Hairy 
Woodpecker is much the larger, having about doilble 
the weight of the little Downy. But why this one 
should have been called "Hairy" instead of the other is 
too much of a sticker for me. Both kinds have hairy 
bristles protecting the base of the bill. The larger one 
may have been named first, and so the little fellow had 
to take any old name they could fix up. Surely it is no 
more downy in plumage than any other small bird. 
But this is just as reasonable as many other names — of 

96 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

birds or of people. The male of each of these wears 
a distinguishing patch of red on the back of his head, 
while the females are plain black and white. 

"Hairy" is the more northerly in range of the two, and 
its nest is not so often found as the Downy's. Both of 
them generally nest in the woods or swamps, but Downy 
often does so in an orchard or in shade trees near the 
house. The first nest of the Hairy which I ever found 
was in the woods near a Barred Owl's nest. I was 
making an afternoon call on Mrs. Owl, when I heard a 
woodpecker hammering away very steadily. Follow- 
ing the sound, I found a female Hairy Woodpecker 
excavating her hole about fifteen feet up in the trunk 
of a perfectly sound young oak. This bird is very 
hardy and is among the first of the birds to set up 
housekeeping in the spring, along with the Bluebird 
and Robin. This was the middle of April, and on the 
twenty-ninth I found her incubating four eggs in her 
completed mansion. The wood was as hard as flint, 
and it seems wonderful that any bird by "butting" its 
head against material that turns the edge of a knife 
blade should be able to dig out a burrow a foot and a 
half deep. 

In the overflowed tract of woodland to which I have 
already alluded, where Flickers breed so abundantly, 
every year the Hairy and Downy are also to be found — 
if one is willing to put on long rubber boots and wade 
about among the slippery and slimy submerged branches 
tumbling now and then into a hole. Almost always I 

97 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

get in over my boot tops when I try it. My wife thinks 
it is an abominable place, but Ned and I call it one of 
the best in town, and that is saying a good deal. Both 
of these woodpeckers drill their holes in the dead stubs, 
pretty well up, especially Hairy, who has young well 
grown by the time Downy has eggs. Both kinds make a 
great fuss when we intrude upon their eggs, especially 
if they have young. Indeed, the Hairies are so inclined 
to borrow trouble that they begin to scold and chatter 
as soon as they see us coming, and give away the very 
secret which they are so anxious to conceal. 

When the cold winds blow from the icy north and 
the ground is white with its winter carpet, everyone 
ought to feed the birds. It is delightful to see how 
general this custom has become. Hang up a piece of 
fat meat on a tree near your window, out of reach of 
cats and dogs, or even on the window sill, and you will 
be delighted to watch the bird visitors, with their 
animated ways and eagerly sparkling eyes. Among 
them will almost surely be our friend "Downy," and 
sometimes "Hairy," too. They are such nervous, 
restless, ceaselessly active little bodies, the very embodi- 
ment of perpetual motion — especially Hairy. Yes, I 
see that I can get along nicely by describing Downy, 
and adding that Hairy is even more so. Really it seems 
as though two Downies had been concentrated in 
making one Hairy. It is always especially Hairy! 
Hairy 's nervous "specialty," though, makes him the 
shier of the two, as might be expected. 

98 





Ned got the Hairy Woodpecker 
(p. 100). 



Downy Woodpecker attracted by suet. 

"Every one ought to feed the 

birds" (p. 98). 




Downy Woodpecker. Angry at a cat, raising its crest (p. 99). 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

This lunch counter arrangement offers a fine chance 
to secure photographs of our visitors. The camera 
does not alarm them much, except Hairy! — so we may 
set it up on the tripod, focus on the food, and, with all 
in readiness for an instantaneous exposure, lay the line 
of thread in through the keyhole or under the window, 
and watch for a good shot. When the bird is just 
right, pull the thread. This seems easy, and yet it is 
surprising how many plates one will spoil. The bird 
is so seldom still that it is very apt indeed to move just 
as the shutter opens and give a blurred image. The 
only way is to keep trying, and some of the pictures 
will be good. Of course one should do this only on a 
bright day, and use the fastest kind of plate, with lens 
wide open and the quickest possible exposure. 

One day I got a particularly interesting picture of a 
Downy Woodpecker. A female bird was feeding on 
some suet nailed under a stub. The camera was all 
ready, and I was about to pull the thread when I noticed 
a cat sneaking along the path, hoping to spring on the 
bird. No sooner did Downy espy the great enemy 
than she set up an excited and angry chirping, and at 
the same time erected the feathers on the back of her 
head and neck to a sharp pointed crest. I pulled, and 
had her in all her glory. Few people, probably, realize 
that Woodpeckers can become crested, even the kinds 
which, unlike the Pileated, have no topknot. 

There was little trouble, comparatively, in photo- 
graphing Downy, but Hairy was quite another proposi- 

99 



KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 

tion. A fine male of his persuasion was visiting me 
daily, but he was so shy and nervous. Before coming 
to eat he would jerk and dodge, back and forth, till it 
seemed that he would never come to eat after all. 
However, in time he would make up his mind, and dart 
down to the piazza to strike the suet telling knockout 
blows; with an excited chirp now and then, he would 
quickly chisel off all he wanted and dart away. 

I wasted so much time trying to pull the thread on 
him and get even a single picture for this book, that 
Ned thought that he would try to beat me. So he 
propped up a stick out in the snow with a piece of suet 
on top, focused the camera on it, and sat for hours at a 
window, reading and watching, ready to pull the thread. 
Now and then the bird appeared, but went off, afraid of 
the camera. At last, just for an instant, he alighted 
on the stick, under the meat, and Ned "got" him, as 
nice as you please. I fear that it will be a long time 
before Ned stops crowing about how he beat me photo- 
graphing Hairy Woodpeckers. 



100 



CHAPTER VII 

BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

{Goatsuckers and Hummers) 

NED thinks he is going to stick me this morning. 
He wants to know why the order of birds which 
includes the goatsuckers, hummers and swifts 
is called "Macrochires," which the book says means 
long-handed, that is, long-winged, and the gulls are 
called "Longipennes," which means long-winged, too. 
I told him the last was derived from the Latin and 
the other from the Greek language. But this did not 
satisfy him. He thinks the gulls are well named, but 
not the others, because among the land birds the swal- 
lows are long-winged, too, and the birds of prey, and 
that "small-footed" would have been a better name, 
because all these species have small, weak legs and feet. 
The goatsuckers perch along a branch because their 
feet are too weak to clasp it easily, and the swifts can 
only cling, while the hummers, though they can perch, 
have frail enough little "hands." I had to admit that 
there was a good deal of reason in what he said and 
told him I hoped that some day, when he had become 
a great scientist, he would have some things changed. 
Meanwhile, now, since we are getting up a book of our 

101 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

own, we are going to call things whatever we like, so 
we shall speak of this order as the "handicapped" birds, 
because their weak hands seem so unfitted for the 
world's work. Were it not for their strong wings, the 
handicap would be too much for them. 

For convenience sake only, I shall speak of the swifts 
in the chapter with the swallows, and go on now to these 
most singular of our birds, the Whippoorwill and the 
Nighthawk. The ancients called birds of this order 
"goatsuckers," from the absurd superstition that they 
sucked the milk from goats with their large mouths, as 
vampire bats have been said to do. Slander is hard to 
down, and the bad name has stuck to them ever since. 

"Are the Whippoorwill and Nighthawk the same 
birds?" This is a question which people ask me over 
and over again. Well, I should say not! They re- 
semble each other in form and size, and are closely 
related species, belonging to the same family group, 
but their habits are very different. The difference is 
about like that between the Song and Chipping Spar- 
rows, the Wood Thrush and the Veery among thrushes, 
or the Oven-bird and the Redstart among warblers. 
The Whippoorwill is probably partly to blame for this 
confusion, for it will seldom give people a good look at 
it, coming out of its retreat in the woods only after dusk. 
It looks like the Nighthawk in form, as it flies, so peo- 
ple imagine that the familiar "whip-poor-will" is the 
Nighthawk's evening song and use both names as for 
the same bird. 

102 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

Some of Ned's boy friends have tried very hard to 
"get" the Whippoorwill, that is, to get a good look at it. 
When it begins its song in the evening, they follow the 
sound and try to creep up close to the bird. But it is 
so dark that the sly rascal usually flits away some dis- 
tance and begins again its tantalizing call. One boy 
had the good luck one night to trace the bird to a rock 
in an open field near the edge of the woods. It was 
moonlight, and he stole up near enough to see it very 
plainly. Ned once got a pretty good view of a Whip- 
poorwill on the top of a rail fence, and another night 
he and I watched for quite a while as it perched length- 
wise on the ridge pole of a low roof. What a racket it 
was making! The people in the house came out to see 
what was up. 

But see now what great differences there are between 
the Whippoorwill and the Nighthawk. The Whip- 
poorwill is brown, the Nighthawk gray, with a white 
bar on its wings. The Nighthawk is the long-winged 
bird seen flying about well up in the air in the daytime, 
especially during the afternoon, uttering a peculiar 
squeak, and then diving swiftly almost to the earth, 
making a loud booming sound as it suddenly checks 
its flight and saves itself from having its brains dashed 
out. The Whippoorwill, on the other hand, only flies 
about at dusk and after, not rising high up, but gliding 
from perch to perch in short sallies, and then, as it 
perches, it utters the well-known cry which is inter- 
preted — "whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will." The Whip- 

103 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

poorwill stays during the day in the woods and lays 
two white eggs sparsely marked with faint lilac on the 
dead leaves on the ground among the woodland shades ; 
the Nighthawk, when not flying about, suns itself during 
the day upon a rock or dusty place out in a field or 
pasture, and lays its two darkly-marked eggs on or 
beside a low flat rock which just crops out from the 
ground in an open lot. In cities people sometimes find 
Nighthawks' eggs on the flat tar and gravel roofs of 
blocks of houses. 

The entire food of both these birds consists of insects, 
and they are exceedingly useful. In the south the 
Nighthawk is popularly known as "Bull-bat," and is 
often called familiarly simply "Bat." It is most un- 
fortunate that there, in some quarters, the custom has 
arisen of shooting Nighthawks as game. They eat 
enormous quantities of mosquitoes, gnats and flies, also 
potato bugs, ants, and a variety of noxious insects, and 
the same is true of the Whippoorwill. Everything 
possible ought to be done to protect these birds. Pos- 
sibly the name Nighthawk is responsible for the shooting 
of this species by ignorant persons who imagine that, 
as they are "hawks," they must kill chickens. But 
the poor bird is no hawk at all, rather more like a large 
swallow, and it is decidedly a day bird, so it badly 
needs a new name. 

The most likely way of obtaining photographs of 
birds of this class is by first finding their nests. If we 
should happen upon them in their ordinary haunts 

104 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

while at rest in the hot part of the day, we might be 
allowed to steal up fairly near and be allowed time for 
a snapshot. But such good fortune is rare and at best 
we should not be able to approach very near. But 
when the nest is found, particularly when incubation is 
well under way, the sitting bird is often very tame and 
the careful worker can be reasonably sure of success. 

To speak first of the Whippoorwill, the eggs are 
usually laid, in northern or middle districts, about the 
last of May or the first week in June. The best place 
to look is in second growth woods, where there is a 
moderate amount of undergrowth, usually near an 
opening, and particularly where there is a pile of dry 
brush or a fallen tree. The bird makes no nest, but 
merely selects a spot on the dead leaves on the ground, 
in the shade, where her two handsome eggs are de- 
posited. The way I find a nest is to notice in the 
evenings where Whippoorwills first begin to call in the 
woods, and then by day tramp back and forth, round 
and round, in that territory, beating the bushes with a 
stick. The brown mother sits very closely, and her 
colors and markings blend so wonderfully with the 
surroundings that there is not one chance in a thousand 
of seeing her thus. However, if we walk within a few 
feet of her she will fly up and away, and then the white 
eggs are conspicuous enough. 

A few years ago there was a patch of woods and 
shrubbery, a sort of island surrounded by open fields, 
in which a pair of Whippoorwills nested each season. 

105 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

I first discovered the nest by accident. Walking 
through the woods I passed near a pile of brush, when 
up flew a long-winged brown bird from a shaded spot 
beside a clump of small saplings and flitted off with 
silent flight like a bat. There were her two eggs — on 
the seventh of June — the first WhippoorwilPs eggs I 
had ever found. I secured a fine picture of her by 
placing the camera close to the nest, covered with 
leaves, and then, with a thread attached, withdrawing 
for an hour to let the bird come back, when I pulled the 
thread for an exposure of one second. The male bird, 
I found, was accustomed to roost lengthwise along the 
trunk of a fallen sapling, where I could almost always 
find him in daytime, but he would not let me come 
very near. Each year after that, at about the same 
time, I would visit these woods and flush the female 
from her eggs, not in the same spot, but within a 
hundred yards of it. The male always found his old 
log again, until one day I failed to start him, and 
scattered brown feathers showed that some hawk or 
prowling "varmint" had probably made a meal of him. 
Next winter the grove was cut off and no more Whip- 
poorwills came there. 

In the cold, backward spring of 1907, on the twenty- 
sixth of June, I was walking with a friend in a grove 
near his home, when I heard a Scarlet Tanager chirping 
excitedly, and also a Vireo. We altered our course and 
went to see what was the matter. The disturber proved 
to be a marauding jay skulking in the foliage, and the 

106 




Whippoorwill on nest. "Within two or three feet" (p. 107). 




Young Whippoorwills in nest, heads apart. "Two queer little chicks" (p. 108). 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

smaller birds were trying to drive it off. As we stood 
in a little open place in the woods, it chanced that I was 
within three feet of a Whippoorwill on its nest. I 
should never in the world have seen it even then, had 
not the bird become uneasy over our talking and 
flushed. There were the two eggs, unusually elongated 
and very beautifully marked, evidently freshly laid. 

A heavy rain storm w^as just beginning, so I had to 
postpone my photographing, and was not able to return 
till the next week. The bird was on the nest, but so 
still and inconspicuous that for the life of me I could 
not see where she was, until in my blundering I started 
her off. As on the previous occasion, I set the camera 
on a pile of dead leaves, on a very short tripod. It was 
a couple of hours before she was back on the nest, and 
then I pulled the thread, first to open the shutter, and 
ten seconds later to close it. I could see that she re- 
mained motionless. Then I crept up silently on hands 
and knees to change the plate behind the camera, 
thinking that possibly she might not start. She was 
now tamer than I had dared to hope. Not only did 
she let me change the plate and take her again, but she 
allowed me to move the camera nearer, within two or 
three feet, and take long-timed exposures for fine detail, 
with the lens stopped down to a very small opening. 
The resulting pictures were all that I could possibly 
desire. I visited her again from time to time with Ned. 
He took some fine pictures all by himself, as good as 
mine, and I got a few more. Now we could walk 

107 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

right up boldly and plant the camera within two feet 
of her without alarming her. Once I was there after 
sundown. Having taken a picture in the soft light, I 
thought I would see if she would let me touch her, but 
she gave a little hop and flutter and perched upon a 
fallen branch close by the nest. There she sat motion- 
less, not along the limb, as ordinarily, but almost, if 
not quite, directly across it. Carefully I turned the 
camera toward her, after hurriedly screwing on my lens 
of longest focus, and moving the tripod slowly a little 
nearer. It was so dark that I could hardly see to focus, 
and it required quite a long exposure. I made two, 
the longest and best — as it proved — taking two whole 
minutes, yet the bird never winked or moved, giving me 
a fine picture of an unusual sort. 

In the morning of the thirteenth of July, seventeen 
days after I first found the nest, my friend saw a Whip- 
poorwilPs eggshell lying in the road, two gunshots from 
the nest, so he surmised that the eggs I was watching 
had just hatched. Two days later I found the mother 
brooding two queer little chicks covered with yellowish 
down, right in the hollow where the eggs had been. 
She was reluctant to leave them, and when she did 
they scurried away a foot or two, and squatted in the 
leaves. I photographed them at once, for I knew that 
they were liable any day to scramble off, as one spot to 
them is as good as another. It was well that I did so, 
for when I came again, the next week, they had dis- 
appeared. Sometimes, it is said, the mother removes 

108 




Nighthawk. "Blends with the gray of the . . . rock" (p. 109). 




Young Nighthawks. "Singular little striped fellows" (p. 110), 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

the young, or even the eggs, in her mouth to a place of 
safety when they have been intruded upon. 

The Nighthawk, like the Whippoorwill, is very 
tenacious of its nesting location. Year after year the 
pair will resort to the same identical low flat rock in 
the old pasture or hay field, or to another close by. 
The eggs are laid at about the same time as the Whip- 
poorwills'. It is often fearfully hot on the unshielded 
rock, out in the glare of the summer sun, but the bird 
sticks bravely to her task and seems to know no such 
thing as sunstroke. 

Just as the Whippoorwill blends with the brown of 
the dead leaves, so does the Nighthawk with the gray 
of the weather-beaten rock. Not long ago I conducted 
a party of ladies, members of a bird club, to inspect a 
Nighthawk on her nest. There were ten of them, and 
in extended .line we approached the spot, a low flat 
rock just projecting from the ground, in a hay field. 
When we were perhaps twenty feet away, we stopped, 
and I pointed to the motionless bird. Ten pairs of 
field glasses were leveled at the poor, modest creature. 
This aggregation must have looked about as formidable 
to her as a company of soldiers aiming their rifles would 
have done to us. She was relying, though, on her pro- 
tective coloration, and, indeed, not one of the enthusiasts 
was able at first to make her out. At last, one by one, 
each with a squeal of delight, made the great discovery. 
They fairly stared her out of countenance, for, as we 
drew a little nearer, she fluttered off, dragging her wings 

109 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

over the grass as though badly wounded, to tempt us 
to follow her. 

Though I knew of various Nighthawk locations, and 
found their eggs from year to year, this bird was es- 
pecially tame, and was my preferred stalking-horse for 
photographs. I first snapped her in 1900, using a 
thread, from a distance. Every season she set up 
business at the old stand, and in 1907 I found her — late, 
like the Whippoorwill — on the first day of July with two 
fresh eggs. By creeping up very carefully and making 
every movement slowly, I was able to place the camera, 
on the tripod, within less than a yard of her, and took 
as many pictures as I needed, without having to retire 
and wait. Ned tried to "get" her that day with the 
camera, but he was in too much of a hurry and scared 
her off; but later he snapped her with the "Reflex," 
as she sat on a rock. 

On July sixteenth the eggs were evidently about to 
hatch, and the Nighthawk was tamer than I had ever 
known one to become. Not only could I photograph 
her, but I poked her with a short stick and made her 
stand up and raise her wings beside the eggs without 
flying. On the nineteenth I found the young hatched, 
the eggshells still lying near by on the rock. It was well 
that I photographed the singular little striped fellows 
when I did, for next day the field was mowed. The 
men put the little birds on a higher rock so that they 
might not be injured, but a few days later, when I came, 
they had disappeared. Either the old birds moved 

110 




Nighthawk on eggs, alarmed. "My preferred stalking-horse for photographs" 

(p. 110). 




Nighthawk by her eggs. "Made her raise her wings" (p. 110). 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

them, or else some prowling varmint got them, which 
last we trust did not occur. 

It seemed but a few days till the last of August, when 
the Nighthawks began to appear in straggling flocks, 
flying southward in a leisurely manner, catching insects 
as they went. On the eighth of September the sky 
for hours was dotted with them in every direction. It 
was reassuring to any bird lover to see so many, proving 
that there must yet be some places where they are 
abundant. But there came with it also a minor cadence, 
a thought as of sere and yellow autumn. "Ned," I 
said to him, "those migrants are telling us that we shall 
photograph no more nesting Nighthawks this year." 

Though the art museums of Europe may have some 
treasures of which America cannot boast, our continent 
has the distinction of a monopoly of the world's supply 
of Hummingbirds, the gems of all the feathered crea- 
tion. Of these there are said to be some four hundred 
species — the four hundred we may call them! — nearly 
all of which are peculiar to the tropical regions. Only 
eighteen cross the borders of the United States from 
Mexico, and appear only in our southwestern States, 
except one, our familiar little "Ruby-throat," which is 
found throughout the United States and up as far north 
as Labrador. Nothing in bird life is comparable with 
these wonderful tiny creatures. They are literally gems, 
in that their feathers flash brilliant, wonderful hues 
which vary as in the kaleidoscope at every angle of 

111 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

vision. Their motions are too rapid for the eye clearly 
to follow. Though they have no song, and emit only 
an insect-like chirp or squeak, the hummer, as a writer 
has prettily said, "needs none. Its beauty gives it dis- 
tinction, and its wings make music." 

Nearly everyone knows the little hummer — the 
Ruby-throated Hummingbird, the books call it — which 
darts about in the garden from flower to flower. Its 
tiny wings move so rapidly that they appear only as a 
blur, and produce the humming sound from which the 
bird takes its name. Almost fearless of man, it hovers 
by the blossom close beside us, like some large insect. 
Though it measures a trifle over three inches long, 
there are insects which can easily be mistaken for it. 
A certain large moth has often deceived me for the 
moment; but the fact that it comes in the dusk, when 
the little hummer has gone to bed, may guard one 
against being deceived. 

The popular idea is that the hummer lives only on 
honey gathered from flowers. This is a mistake. The 
bird does secure some honey, but its food consists 
mainly of the small insects which frequent the flowers. 
Some of these insects are injurious to the blossom and 
the tiny bird fulfills a useful function in destroying them. 
That the hummer is insectivorous is also shown by its 
habit of catching tiny insects on the wing, which is 
occasionally observed. 

So familiar are Hummingbirds toward man that they 
will readily enter open windows of houses if they see 

112 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

flowers within. I have even read of their visiting the 
artificial flowers on a lady's hat when she was walking 
out, and other writers speak of their taking sugar from 
between a person's lips. In a room they become con- 
fused, and, being so frail, are apt to injure themselves 
by striking against objects. More than once I or mem- 
bers of my family have caught the frightened little 
waifs for their good, and released them in the open air. 
It is of no use to try to keep them in captivity, unless, 
possibly, it were in a greenhouse where there were 
plenty of flowers, for no artificial food has ever been 
found which will nourish them. Yet even there they 
would probably kill themselves by flying against the 
glass. 

We may expect the little hummer in the Middle 
States or New England early in May each year. They 
seem to come paired and resort each time to the familiar 
hunting grounds. At least we are apt to see Humming- 
birds in the same places year after year. By early June 
each pair has its dainty nest and two tiny white eggs 
hardly larger than peas. A favorite site for the nest is 
an old lichen-grown apple tree in an orchard, generally 
not high up. But often they will choose some shade 
tree, like a maple, in the garden or along the street. 
Sometimes it is on a tree in a swamp or in deep woods. 

It was in the latter situation that I found my first 
occupied nest of the hummer, though, when a small 
boy, I remember discovering the home of a pair that 
frequented our garden, saddled to the lower limb of a 

113 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

larch tree close by the house, but only after the birds 
had left it. It was one Memorial Day, and with a 
friend I was looking for birds in some tall white pine 
woods. My attention was attracted by a Veery, or 
Wilson's Thrush, which flew up from the ground into 
a pine. Just as it alighted it was attacked in the most 
violent manner by a tiny bird, which was so quick in 
its motions that I could hardly tell what was going on. 
The thrush, though a far larger bird, unable to rival 
such velocity and deftness of attack, was driven off in a 
hurry. Naturally we assumed that there was a nest 
near, and sure enough, there it was, about two-thirds 
way out on one of the lower branches of the pine, some 
fifteen feet up, not in a crotch, but built on to the 
branch itself, as though it were a knot or excrescence of 
the same. While we examined it the female buzzed 
and darted about our heads like an angry bee. As for 
the male, he did not put in his appearance, and I have 
reason to fear that he is a shirk. Since then I have 
found various nests, but I do not in any case recall 
seeing the male about when his wife was in distress 
over the intrusion. Some writers state that he leaves 
to her all the care of eggs and young. Formerly he was 
very ardent in his protestations of affection and devo- 
tion, but now, as the flowers expand in greater profusion, 
he finds them more interesting than the prosaic duties 
of home. 

This home, howbeit, is one of the most remarkable 
and artistic creations of all bird architecture. It is a 

114 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

tiny, delicate cup, made of the softest plant down, sad- 
dled upon some rather slender branch, so deftly that it 
seems a part thereof. Delicate cobweb threads are 
used to compact and secure the material, and likewise 
to coat the exterior with the gray-green lichens so gen- 
erally found upon trees. This makes it so assimilate 
with the surroundings that it is a very difficult object 
to discover. And thereby hangs a tale. A gentleman 
had told me that, if I would call upon him, he would 
show me an occupied nest of a Hummingbird in his 
orchard. When I came he was out of town, but I 
thought I would see if I could not find the nest myself. 
So I made inspection from tree to tree, and presently 
the female hummer began to fly about me anxiously. 
We played a game of hot and cold until it became 
evident that the nest must be in a certain low apple tree 
which had many dead, lichen-covered branches. Some 
of these came down nearly to the ground, and for quite 
a while I stood by the tree, running my eyes along each 
branch in order, trying to make out the nest, while the 
female kept darting frantically at my head. It must 
have been nearly a quarter of an hour before I dis- 
covered that I was standing almost touching the nest 
with my hands, having been looking right over it all 
the time. It contained two fresh eggs, this being in 
the early part of June. The branch upon which it was 
built was completely overgrown with lichens, and the 
nest, covered with them too, was wonderfully disguised, 
though there were no leaves to hide it. 

115 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

Another nest I found in a similar fashion, but much 
more easily. I was in a patch of swampy thicket of 
low trees and bushes adjoining a meadow. A hummer 
began to dart about, so I looked for the nest and almost 
at once saw it, well out on a low T branch of a maple. 
There were no lichens on this green branch, though they 
had been plastered on the nest, as usual, so that it was 
more conspicuous than in the other case. This nest 
also had two eggs. 

These hatch in less than two weeks, probably ten to 
twelve days, and in two weeks more the young have 
grown up and gone. There is easily time, then, for a 
second brood to mature before the nights grow cool, and 
the hummers often take advantage of this fact. One 
day in July a little girl came running in to tell us that 
she had found a hummer's nest in the orchard back 
of our home. It was placed on a low branch, about 
breast high from the ground, and contained but one 
egg. The little mother darted about, alighting here 
and there on slender twigs as I examined the nest. 
When I withdrew a few yards she would quickly return 
to her duty. It was a beautiful sight to see her enter 
the nest. She did not perch upon the edge, but hovered 
over it, and, with wings speeding like the wheel of a 
dynamo, would then drop right into her little cup just 
as a piece of thistle-down might have settled upon it, 
lightly and airily, making one of the prettiest bird sights 
that I have ever seen. 

Evidently it was a fine chance to photograph, not 

116 




Humming Bird incubating. "Would quickly return to her duty" (p. 116). 




Hummer "in the midst of the feeding comedy" (p. 120). 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

only the nest, but the bird upon it as well. This was a 
decade ago, when I was just beginning to photograph 
wild birds, and I did not utilize the opportunity as fully 
as I should have done later. However, I set up the 
camera upon the tripod, very close to the nest, and, 
attaching the thread to the shutter, sat down under the 
next tree to await my opportunity. The hummer 
returned to the nest at once, paying no heed to the 
instrument. Unfortunately the foliage obscured the 
light, and at that time I was under the false impression 
that a slow plate would give the best results, with most 
detail, in this sort of work. This necessitated a timed 
exposure, and the bird was almost sure to turn her 
head when the shutter opened. Thus I accumulated a 
series of pictures of a double-headed hummer, a species 
which is not recognized by scientists. One negative, 
from a snapshot, was sharp but very faint. Yet there 
is hope even thus of a valuable exposure, if only there 
be detail, however weak. The best thing to do is to 
print or enlarge on the most contrasty grade of glossy 
lamplight paper, which will give a strong, plucky print. 
If it is too black, reduce it to the proper degree with red 
prussiate of potassium reducer, as one would a plate, 
giving local reduction where it is needed. Then photo- 
graph the print in a way not to show the grain of the 
paper, and the resulting negative, as compared with the 
original, will prove a surprise and a delight. A rare 
and valuable picture is well worth this trouble, and I 
have saved many undertimed snapshots in this way. 

117 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

In this case there was no opportunity for camera studies 
of the young hummer, for the egg never hatched. The 
faithful mother brooded it week after week till she lost 
heart and quit. Then I took possession and blew the 
egg, finding in it nothing but water. 

The time came, at length, when I was to have every 
facility for this study and when, with wider experience, 
I could take full advantage of it. It came at a season 
when I had no idea of any more pictures of bird nesting, 
unless of the ever tardy Goldfinch — in mid-August. A 
road was being cut through a tract of woods, just back 
from the shore of a small lake. One afternoon they 
cut down a black birch tree, and the next morning, 
when one of the men was cutting it up, he heard a 
continued chirping, and, upon making investigation, 
found the nest of a Hummingbird out on a slender 
branch of the fallen tree, about twenty-five feet up from 
the base. It was tipped over to one side, yet in it was 
a young hummer, clinging to the soft lining, and on 
the ground beneath it was another. They were nearly 
fledged and just about able to fly. Taking pity on the 
poor little things, the man cut off the limb with the nest, 
fixed it firmly between two trees about five feet from 
the ground, and placed the little hummers upon it. 
At first they fluttered out, and, indeed, they seemed so 
much too large for the tiny cup that it appeared almost 
impossible for them both to fit in. But what man 
could not do the birds did themselves, when they got 
good and ready. The men on the estate were much 

118 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

interested in the tiny creatures, and, fearing that they 
were abandoned to starve, sent to me to learn how to 
feed them. Fortunately, however, there was no need 
for clumsy human effort, which would have been 
unavailing. The mother bird soon found them, as 
she may have done already, and was busy feeding 
them long before I arrived, which was not until the 
next day. 

It was a sight which well repaid me for the drive up 
the steep mountain road. The nest itself was beautiful, 
but even more so were the tiny mites of bird life which 
occupied it. The old saying that there is always room 
for one more may be true in human affairs, but it cer- 
tainly would not apply to this hummer's nest. Both 
birds were side by side, facing the same way, tails and 
bills projecting over the rim of the nest. The green 
and gray of their plumage harmonized beautifully with 
the greenish lichens which adorned the nest. There 
was a pretty, confiding air about the little beauties. 
They did not seem afraid and I could approach them 
as closely as I wished without alarming them. 

As it was already mid-afternoon, I set about photo- 
graphing them at once. Presently, as I was arranging 
the camera, I heard a buzzing sound, and the young 
began to chirp and struggle excitedly. The mother had 
come to feed them, but she went off when she saw me. 
As soon as I had photographed the young in the nest, 
I tied a thread to the shutter and sat down a few rods 
away, hoping for a shot the next time that the mother 

119 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

came with food. After some little waiting, I again 
heard the buzzing sound. It was the old bird; yet she 
did not come directly to the nest, but alighted well up 
in a tree near by. Then she perched on a twig near the 
nest, where she stood quivering her wings. The young 
were greatly excited; they chirped with all their might, 
quivering with eagerness, and opened their outstretched 
bills, begging for food. Then the mother hovered close 
over them, but darted away, not liking the camera. 
After doing this a few times, she alighted on the branch 
close to the nest, and I sprung the shutter. Its snap 
frightened her away, and I changed the plate. She 
soon returned, and this time I waited till she was in 
the midst of the feeding comedy before I pulled. 

This is a most remarkable performance. The parent 
alights on the edge of the nest and stands quietly for a 
moment, while the young are begging with all the 
eloquence and earnestness which would betoken a mat- 
ter of life and death — as it certainly is to them, poor 
little things! Perhaps she is deciding which youngster 
to favor and making inward preparation for what 
naturalists call the act of regurgitation. Selecting the 
fortunate hopeful, she inserts her bill into the widely- 
opened mouth and forces it deep down into the anatomy 
of the youngster. Then she rams it violently up and 
down, and with each jerk ejects from her crop the 
luscious nectar, a mixture of partly digested insects and 
honey. Sometimes she would bring a small whitish 
insect held at the tip of her bill, but when she fed this 

120 




Hummer and young. " Sometimes she would bring a small whitish insect" (p. 120) 




Young Hummers in nest. " A pretty confiding air about the little beauties " (p. 119) . 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

to the chick, she also continued the meal with other 
food from the store below. Meanwhile the other little 
fellow would appear terribly disappointed. Then the 
shutter would click and she would dart away, but we 
may believe that the next time she knew enough to feed 
the other chick. 

I had only one more shot that afternoon, and then 
the sun sank behind the tops of the forest. In the 
little clearing the light only served from eleven to four 
o'clock, and the next day I gave this space of time to 
the work. At first I moved the nest lower down and 
secured even better pictures of the young than I had 
done the day before. Just as I had made the last 
exposure which I desired, the old bird began to buzz 
around. One of the young became very uneasy. It 
stirred about in the nest and began to whir its wings. 
At first this had no effect, but presently the wings took 
hold upon the air, and the little one floated upward as 
slowly and gently as a feather and reached a branch a 
dozen feet from the ground. I tried to catch it and put 
it back, but only made it fly up higher into the forest, 
and I saw it no more, though at times I could hear its 
little insect-like chirp. 

The nest was now in shadow, so I moved it a few 
yards out into open sunlight and set the camera. 
Presently the mother bird returned, but did not see the 
nest and went off. Time dragged by and she did not 
return. Alarmed and remorseful I put the nest back 
close to its former location. The sun's rays came to it, 

121 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

but not the mother. Meanwhile, the poor chick chirped 
hungrily and made my heart ache for it. Finally, well 
along in the afternoon, I heard the familiar buzz, and 
when the mother came and fed the chick gratitude and 
delight welled up in my soul. The old hummer now 
returned at frequent intervals and I secured four more 
pictures. 

On this trip I had the pleasure of the genial and lively 
society of Ned. He was greatly interested in the 
various sights and proceedings and assisted me in a 
number of ways. But the long wait for the return of 
the mother bird proved too slow for his sanguine 
temperament. The lake shimmered enticingly through 
the woodland foliage, and there were fish in it too! I 
saw that Ned was casting wistful glances in that direc- 
tion and then toward the nest and the expected hum- 
mer. He wanted to see the feeding process, but he did 
want to "go fishin'," — like any other boy. Ned was 
certainly a remarkably good ornithologist for his years, 
but we would not give the impression that he was any 
little old man, or a "dry-as-dust." That was not the 
case, for he is a real live American boy and reads a 
publication of that name. I knew just how he felt and 
told him to go ahead and get a mess for supper. That 
was the last I saw of him for quite a while. Toward 
the end of the afternoon he came back with a string of 
twenty-five and he was in time to see the mother hummer 
give her youngster some supper. 

The following afternoon I drove my wife up to see 

122 



BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 

the wonder, if, indeed, it were not too late. To our 
joy the tiny bird was still in the nest and its mother 
was so attentive that within an hour I had seven more 
pictures to the good. Pictures of the little dear perching 
on a twig, ready for his exit into the great wide world, 
crowned the successful labors. Next day the workmen 
found only the empty nest which had served well its 
purpose of giving to the world two more art treasures 
of bird life. 



123 



CHAPTER VIII 

PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

(The Flycatchers) 

ONE day I had a fine reward for giving a little girl 
a ride in my buggy. She was trudging to her 
home over a mile away, so, as I overtook her, 
I stopped and let her get in. "Have you seen the bird's 
nest on top of the post?" was about the first thing she 
said. "No, where is it?" I inquired. "Just on beyond 
here," she replied, "I'll show you when we come to it." 
"There she is on the nest!" presently exclaimed the 
child. Sure enough, there sat a bird flat on top of one 
of the posts of the wire fence which separated the high- 
way from the railway track. As we came nearer I saw 
it was a Kingbird. I slowed the horse down to a walk, 
and watched to see how near the bird would let us come. 
The country road was very narrow, and when we were 
opposite the devoted little mother she was just about 
within arm's reach, yet there she sat.. I stopped the 
horse, and then she flew up on the telegraph wires over- 
head, where she expressed noisily her disapproval of 
my loitering on her premises. She did not mind, the 
little girl said, if people went along past and attended to 

124 




Kingbird on nest. "A most remarkable situation" (p. 125). 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

their own business, but she had no use for inquisitive 
persons. 

The top of the post, I found, had become rotted out 
in the center, forming a nice little cup. In this the 
birds had built a very frail nest, nothing like the bulky 
one they usually make, and the female had laid the 
three usual handsomely blotched eggs. Besides being 
so close to vehicles passing on the road, on the other 
side the railway trains whizzed by within a yard of her, 
and altogether it was a most remarkable situation for 
birds which usually prefer an orchard. Right across 
the road was an apple orchard, just the place for them, 
one would think, but the queer selection they made 
was no one's affair but their own, and I am glad they 
made the choice they did. 

I was afraid that, in such a public place some mis- 
creant would break up the nest before I could get 
photographs. Bright and early the next morning, the 
first day of July, I drove down there, and was delighted 
to find everything all right. The mother was incubat- 
ing, but she would not let me walk up to her with the 
camera. So I set it up on the tripod reasonably near 
the nest, and went off a little way with the thread. 
After some hesitating and flying angrily at the camera, 
the bird decided that it would not hurt her, and settled 
down upon her eggs. Of course I "got" her, and after 
this she would come back almost at once, and I soon 
had as many pictures of her as I wished, in all sorts of 
positions. While I was working, an express train 

125 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

went thundering by. The concussion of the air almost 
blew her off the nest, but she hung on and sat as firmly 
as a cowboy in his saddle. It was usually the same 
story, though once she left when a blundering freight 
was half way by. 

The best fun came when the young were out and 
about half grown. The mother, I think it was, usually 
stood beside them, sometimes shielding them from the 
sun, for there was no shade whatever. There was a 
pond close by, and the father spent most of his time 
watching the dragon flies darting about over the water, 
now and then giving chase to one. They were nearly 
a match for him in flight. Sometimes he would fail 
and go back to his perch, but often enough he captured 
his prey. As he approached home with his prize, he 
always chattered a sort of triumphal march to announce 
his coming. If his mate was not on the nest, she 
hurried to it, both arriving at about the same time. 
The young begged hard for food and their father would 
begin to feed them. But mother yearned to assist, so 
she would often lay hold of the dragon fly and pull 
away till she had torn off a piece, which she would then 
feed to the young. Meanwhile the camera was in 
place and all ready, so at the favorable instant at differ- 
ent stages of the process I pulled the thread and thus 
secured a fine series of pictures. 

Of course Ned had to come in for his share of the 
fun. One day I sat down in the shade and watched 
him while he took my camera, set it up by the nest, 

126 




Kingbird scolding. "Indignant when any one comes near the nest" (p. 127). 




The entire Kingbird family. "The young begged hard for food" (p. 126). 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

focused, put in the plate, removed the slide, attached 
the thread, set the shutter, and made the exposure when 
the birds were feeding. One that he got was especially 
fine, showing very plainly the dragon fly with its long 
gauzy wings held by the bill of the male, and "getting" 
the whole family at one shot. 

To my great satisfaction no one molested the King- 
birds, though everyone in the neighborhood knew of 
the curiosity. I saw them the afternoon before they 
left the nest for good. The little fellows looked very 
pretty with their snow-white little shirts, standing up 
on the post with their mother beside them, and I got a 
snapshot of them thus with my reflecting camera as I 
walked along the road past them. With some difficulty 
I obtained another picture as the father fed them, but 
the old birds were shier of the camera now, and the 
young were not fed so often. I praised the boys for 
not disturbing the nice family and promised each of 
them a picture. 

Nearly everyone knows how boldly the Kingbirds 
defend their nests and has seen them chase the thieving 
crows, flying at them from above and pecking them 
sorely as they try vainly to escape. They even keep 
off hawks from the farmer's premises and destroy such 
a multitude of insects that it is a fine thing to have a 
pair of them located in the orchard. So indignant are 
they when anyone comes near the nest that I have 
taken advantage of this to snap them with my reflecting 
camera. I use a single "22-inch" lens of my eleven- 

127 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

inch-focus doublet, and an aperture of the curtain of 
about an inch and a half, with a moderate speed. 
Taking the bird perched upon a branch, one can thus 
get a good large image with plenty of detail in bright 
sunlight. 

The Kingbird gets its name from its pugnacious ways 
when it must stand for its rights. It does not, however, 
bully other birds without good reason; yet, when it 
decides to assert itself, it is usually able to enforce its 
simple requirement that the undesirable intruder shall 
"get out." It has fighting blood in its veins, for all the 
other species of this distinct and interesting order of 
flycatchers are good fighters. Their main business is 
to catch flying insects, and they all have their art down 
to a fine point. Their method is different from that 
of the swallows, for instead of keeping long a-wing, as 
the latter, the true "flycatcher" stations itself on some 
perch which commands a view, like a hawk, dashes to 
catch the unwary insect, and returns at once to its 
observatory. Various other birds dart after flying 
insects, but have other means of livelihood, while the 
"flycatcher" confines itself largely to this one way. 

We have another "Tyrant Flycatcher," which prob- 
ably is equally tyrannical with the bird that bears the 
royal name — the Crested Flycatcher. Few people 
know it, for it is rather scarce and very shy. Though 
it generally chooses orchards for residence, it prefers 
those that are abandoned or off from houses, at the edge 
of the woods. Even there it is rather hard to see the 

128 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

bird, which is about as large as the Kingbird, for it 
gets out of the way when it notes our approach; but 
its presence may be known by the single loud ringing 
whistle which is different from any other bird note I 
know. They nest in a hollow limb, and it is notorious 
that in building they almost always use cast-off snake 
skins. The eggs are very handsomely and heavily 
marked with lines and scrawls. 

There are two common flycatchers which are liable 
to be confused, the Phcebe and the Wood Pewee. 
Both are small gray birds with whitish and partly dusky 
breasts. The Phcebe is our familiar home bird which 
builds its nest of moss and mud under some sheltered 
part of our buildings, even over our very door, or under 
the piazza. The Wood Pewee may also be seen about 
the premises, but it keeps to the tall shade trees, where 
it builds a frail lichen-covered nest flat on some branch 
or fork. It is a good deal like the architecture of a 
hummingbird and is just about as hard to discover. 
The note of the Wood Pewee is that clear plaintive 
whistle — "pee-wee-ee" — and we surely know the short, 
throaty note "phe-be" of our Phcebe. Another way of 
distinguishing the Wood Pewee is that it is rather more 
slender than Phcebe, generally with a darker breast, 
and it seldom jerks its tail, which last it is Phoebe's 
constant delight to do. 

The Phcebe is a hardy bird and comes back for the 
summer at a very unsummerlike time, the last week of 
March, setting one to wondering how it finds flying 

129 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

insects in such cold weather. Yet notice on the sunny 
side of the building, when the sun shines brightly, how 
many flies are buzzing about, which proves that there 
are flies, if one only knows where to look for them, and 
surely our professional fly-catcher knows that much. 
But if anyone claims to have heard a Phoebe back in 
mid-winter, do not believe it, for the Chickadee makes a 
"pewee" note, and many are the people who are fooled 
and publish their mistake in the local paper. We are 
safe to assume that, no flies, no Phcebes. 

The hardy bird has its nest built some time in the 
latter half of April, according to the sort of season that 
prevails, and lays five white eggs, sometimes sparsely 
spotted. Before the country was settled, the usual 
nesting place was under an overhanging rock, and even 
now some of them keep up the old custom. I have 
discovered a number of such, and Ned found one close 
by where I was photographing the nest of another bird, 
a little way below the foot of a beautiful waterfall. 

For the past three years a pair of Phcebes have 
nested in my barn, and reared two broods of young 
each season — six broods in all, laying five eggs the first 
time, and four the second, and usually hatching and 
rearing them all, or all but one. The nest was on the 
projecting end of a board nailed across two ceiling 
beams, just over where I drove in with the horse and 
buggy. Each year the Phcebe found the old nest all 
right, so she used it five times in succession, but this 
last time she built another nest at the other end of the 

130 




Phoebe and her new husband in the garden (pp. 131-2). 




Phoebe on nest. "Nested in my bam" (p. 130). 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

barn in a similar situation. At first I wondered why 
she deserted such a nice nest, but I found out. One 
day I put my hand into the new nest to see how many 
young there were, and presently I began to scratch my 
head. Oh, how I did itch all that night! My sus- 
picions were aroused, so I touched the young again, 
and looked at my hand. A whole army of lice were 
hurrying to run up my sleeve and I fled to the water 
faucet and put a stop to the migration. Ned does not 
see how the young can stand it, and neither do I. 

We both photographed the Phoebe bird on the nest. 
The way I did it was to bring three barrels nearly 
under the nest and set up the tripod with full extension, 
so that the camera was away up to the ceiling. Stand- 
ing on a step ladder, I could focus on the sitting bird, 
but the light was so dim that I had to set up a large 
mirror outdoors and throw a sunbeam on the nest. 
Then I could make short exposures on her, or remove 
the mirror and make the exposure last two minutes. 
The dear little bird sat perfectly still, and I had the best 
results the latter way; the picture was not so harsh. 

In the early spring, this last season, soon after the 
Phcebes arrived, a sad accident occurred. It was a 
windy day and I saw the barn door slam violently. 
I was minded to go and prop it, but kept on and did 
not. Later in the afternoon a member of my family 
brought in the dead body of the male Phcebe, still 
warm, with his neck broken. The little fellow had 
alighted on the door, and it caught him as it slammed. 

131 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

I felt very sorry, for I thought that now there would 
be no Phoebes in the barn. But in a few days I saw 
the female on the old nest, preparing to lay, and her 
mate perched on the apple tree by the door. Husbands 
were evidently plenty and cheap, especially for a rich 
widow with such fine property. The new bridegroom 
looked exactly like the former one, and our mourning 
was turned into gladness. 

That same season another tragedy occurred in the 
family of a pair of Wood Pewees. These birds are not 
so hardy or so early in nesting as the Phcebes, and it 
was not till the middle of June that I noticed, in driving 
frequently through a grove of locust trees, that a pair 
of Wood Pewees were always there in the same spot. 
"I declare, Ned," I exclaimed, as we drove past again 
and saw a Wood Pewee in the accustomed place, "there 
must be a nest right here, and I'm going to stop and 
look." So I got out of the buggy and immediately 
saw the shallow nest built over a crotch of an extended 
branch over the road above my head, about twenty 
feet above the ground. It contained two young. 

We could not stop then, but a few days later we 
returned, hoping to photograph the nest and get snap- 
shots of the old birds, which were not shy. First I got 
out the reflecting camera, and had Ned climb the tree, 
hoping that the female would come at him and let me 
snap her with my twenty-two-inch lens. But she was a 
meek little body and merely wailed her "pee-ee-ee" 
from the surrounding trees. I had to chase her around 

132 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

for half an hour, but got some quite good snapshots, 
as she perched on dead stubs where the sunlight hap- 
pened to strike on her through the leaves. 

Then we turned our attention to the nest and Ned's 
sharp eyes were the first to discover that the whole 
bottom had fallen out and one of the young had 
tumbled through, had become entangled, and dangled 
dead from the bottom of the nest. Nothing was left 
of it but the rim and the other youngster was perched 
upon that. I failed to get any satisfactory photograph, 
as the only possible location for the camera was too 
far away to show so small an object, and the brittle 
locust limb would not bear one's weight. The next 
time I went by, the dead young one had disappeared. 
The other stayed on the rim of the nest or the branch 
for some days. Then came a terrific wind and thunder 
storm, and the next day, when I passed, the youngster 
was gone, probably blown off and drowned, poor thing ! 

There is another flycatcher closely related to the 
Wood Pewee, the Olive-sided Flycatcher, which we 
may look for only in the migrations as it usually goes 
further north to breed. It looks much like the Wood 
Pewee, but is larger, nearly the size of the Crested 
Flycatcher. It is rather rare and I have only met with 
it a few times, generally seeing it chasing flies from some 
perch in a high tree on the edge of woods or along 
a shaded, retired road. 

Except for the Kingbird and Crested Flycatcher, all 
our flycatchers are dull-colored gray and white birds, 

133 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

and some of them are hard to tell apart. Those already 
spoken of can be distinguished by differences in size 
or build, but there are several little fellows which are 
so much alike that it takes a sharp eye and careful 
study of the Handbook, to identify them. Those which 
may cause confusion are the Alder, Acadian, and Least 
Flycatchers. The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher may be 
recognized by what its name implies. The Acadian 
Flycatcher, a greenish-hued little bird, is seldom seen 
north of the Middle States. 

Of small species the Least Flycatcher is by far the 
best known. It is the familiar little fellow that nests 
in orchards and shade trees, and it is constantly repeat- 
ing its sharp, scolding note, from which they call it 
"Chebec." One year, in June, I was about to start on 
a trip up north into the Province of Quebec, and every 
morning one of these little birds, perched just outside 
my open bedroom windows, would begin at the first 
early ray of dawn and wake me up by calling out 
"Quebec, Quebec." We had a lot of fun over it, 
because members of my family said the bird was very 
anxious to get me off to Quebec so that I should not 
be annoying it with my camera-fiend tricks. 

The nest is apt to be out on a slender branch and is 
not easy to photograph. But I took pictures of one 
with a brood of young about ready to leave by standing 
on a ladder, against which I leaned the camera on the 
tripod and managed to keep it still enough. Another 
time there was a nest out on the end of a branch of a 

134 




Snapshot of Wood Pewee. "As she perched on dead stubs" (p. 133). 




Young Least Flycatcher. "They call it 'Chebec'" (p. 134). 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

pear tree, about a dozen feet up. I secured the picture 
of the mother bird incubating by standing on a step- 
ladder with my reflecting camera and the big lens, 
having a young lady throw light upon the subject, not 
by means of her discourse or countenance, but by a 
mirror which reflected a sunbeam upon the shaded nest. 

All my life until the past June I had never been able 
to find the nest of the Alder Flycatcher — which is a 
recent name for the eastern form of the species long 
known as Traill's Flycatcher. A friend of mine in a 
town not far from where I live, at a higher elevation, 
finding this interesting little bird quite common there, 
invited me to visit him and see the rare flycatcher and 
its nesting. They are late breeders, seldom laying 
before the middle of June, and I did not go till the 
twenty-seventh. 

The bird is known to be one of the most timid and 
secretive of the smaller species and to frequent alder 
swamps. I had always supposed that the place to 
look for it was in dense alder thickets, so I was quite 
surprised when my friend conducted me into a moist 
pasture where there were only scattered branches of 
low alder bushes, most of them not over a yard high. 
In one of these he had located a nest some days before, 
in process of building. Here it was now, only a foot 
from the ground, with one pretty, pinkish egg with 
reddish spots around the larger end — a neat nest, not 
unlike that of the Chestnut-sided Warbler. The owner 
did not appear. 

135 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

We spent the rest of that day with other birds and 
the next morning went to another nest site, in a pasture 
through which flows a large meadow brook. There 
were scattered clumps of alders, some of them of good 
height, but plenty of small ones, too. This nest, how- 
ever, was not in an alder, though close to some, but in 
some other sort of bush, two feet from the ground. It 
contained four eggs, slightly incubated. They were 
warm, but the shy bird had slipped away. Setting the 
camera, well concealed, in the next bush, for a short 
timed exposure, with thread attached, we went off for 
over an hour to give the bird a chance to return. The 
Alder Flycatcher is so very shy that I had my doubts 
as to whether she would ever return to the nest with a 
camera near it. 

When we returned, I crept up within twenty yards 
of the nest to where I had left the spool and pulled the 
thread. The eggs were warm, so the bird was doubt- 
less on when the shutter opened. Yes, and to my 
horror it was still open and the plate spoiled ! Taking 
apart the shutter, I found that some of the delicate 
mechanism had collapsed and that photography was 
all up for the present. Luckily the jeweler in town was 
able to repair it, and early the next morning, my last 
day there, I was at the nest. It was cloudy so I had 
to allow for a half -second exposure. 

After setting the camera I made a slight opening in 
the bushes so that I was able to watch the nest with my 
strong Zeiss glass from quite a distance. To my de- 

136 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

light, within five minutes the bird hopped back on to 
the nest and did not move at the click of the shutter. 

To make this story short, I repeated this operation a 
dozen times, securing a fine array of pictures, probably 
the first ever taken of the Alder Flycatcher from life. 
The camera was within a yard of the nest and I used 
the single twelve-inch lens. The bird became so 
accustomed to my presence that she would return to 
her task sometimes the moment I withdrew. I could 
walk up within a few feet of her as she sat on the nest, 
and once she let me change the plate and photograph 
her by hand without leaving. The last few times I 
pulled the thread as she stood erect on the rim of the 
nest preparatory to descending into it. 

Evidently the shyness of the Alder Flycatcher is not 
unconquerable and is due rather to a natural timidity 
than to dislike for our sort of people. But shy the bird 
certainly is. Except for this one drawn to the nest by 
maternal instinct, it was hard to get even a glimpse of 
them. They are very silent, too. The only sounds I 
heard from those intruded upon was a very soft, low 
"pweet." In the distance the song of the male was 
hardly audible, if, indeed, it deserves to be called a 
song, only two syllables like "pe-weet." 

Leaving this spot, perfectly delighted at my success, I 
drove to the other nest to see if the eggs were laid and 
how that bird would act. Other birds that I met 
delayed me, and, missing the exact clump of alders, 
as there was not time for a careful search I was about 

137 



PROFESSIONAL FLY-CATCHING 

to give up, when I put my hand into the very last likely 
clump of small alders in the open, at the edge of a high 
alder thicket. I almost touched a bird, which darted 
off in a great fright. Actually it was another Alder 
Flycatcher's nest, with two eggs, within only a few 
vards of the one I had missed, situated much as was 
that one — so much so that I would not have believed 
it the same, only it was on the opposite side of the 
clump. Just then it began to rain, but I managed to 
take two photographs of it, and, by driving fast, barely 
caught my train to return home. 



188 




Typical nest of Alder Flycatcher (p. 138). 




Alder Flycatcher. "As she stood erect on the rim of her nest" (p. 137). 



CHAPTER IX 

CROW RELATIVES 

(Crows, Jays, Blackbirds, Orioles, Larks) 

STARTING off bright and early that elegant 
morning, the fifteenth of May, Ned and I drove 
twenty miles over the roughest sort of roads 
through a wild hill country and explored many a fine 
timber tract. It was just the day for active exercise, 
bright, but with a cool easterly breeze. Hosts of 
interesting bird migrants were streaming through on 
their way north and kept us busy identifying them. 
We found five occupied hawks' nests with eggs, and 
it was a great day for crows' nests, too. 

In the second piece of woods which we tackled, we 
were searching for a hawks' nest, which we found a 
little later, when I discovered a large platform of new 
sticks about thirty-five feet up a hemlock tree, with a 
bird's tail sticking out over the edge. At first we both 
thought it was the hawk, but the glass showed the 
plumage to be "black as a crow," and crow it was. 
It was no come-down either, for I especially wanted a 
really good photograph of a nest with a brood of young 
crows. The old bird was sitting like a rock and 

139 



CROW RELATIVES 

would not leave till I rapped the tree. Then I went 
upstairs to the nursery, after strapping on the climbers, 
and found three ugly, nearly naked young. They 
were too small to work upon successfully, so I left them 
to grow larger. 

After this we drove up a long hill through the woods. 
The timber was mostly small, but we came to some 
that was of good size, where we hitched the horse and 
took a scramble up the steep hillside. In a few mo- 
ments I saw a large nest high up in a large chestnut 
tree. A crow was brooding on this one, too, and she 
was as loath to depart as the other bird. The nest was 
so inaccessible for photographing that we did not 
climb, but drove on a number of miles further, devouring 
an ample lunch, as we proceeded, with keen appetites. 

The next tract which we decided to explore was a 
grove of moderate-sized oak timber which proved to be 
smaller than I had thought, and I was at first sorry 
that we had bothered with it. There were several 
squirrels' nests, and presently I saw a nest that looked 
promising. It was only about twenty feet up a slender 
young oak, and there was a bird on it, a crow, I saw, 
as I came nearer. Beside her, at the edge of the nest, I 
could see some bright red objects which puzzled me 
until I made out that they were the widely opened 
mouths of young crows which were poking out their 
heads from under the brooding mother and begging for 
food. 

The old bird left when I came very near and I saw 

140 




I 



^^ 



CROW RELATIVES 

that here was a splendid chance for just the picture I 
wanted. Another small oak grew close alongside the 
one with the nest, at just the right distance and in the 
right direction, on the sunny side of the nest. Ned ran 
to get the small camera and the tree apparatus, while 
I climbed the tree next to the nest and looked in. Five 
hungry little crows, nearly fledged, raised their heads 
and opened their mouths as wide as they knew how, 
beseeching me to appease their gnawing appetites. 
Pretty soon Ned came back with the camera, and, 
after going down to get it and climbing back, I went to 
work to screw it up. It took certainly a quarter of an 
hour to make everything ready. By this time the 
youngsters had settled sleepily down into the nest and 
would not rouse up to beg for food, till I bethought 
myself to cut a switch and stir them up. No sooner 
done than, presto, up popped five black heads, with 
five red-flannel mouths stretched agape, from which 
were issuing excited caws, because they thought that 
mother had arrived. Instantly I squeezed the bulb 
and had them just as I wanted them. I barely had 
time to finish the work when it clouded over darkly, 
so we drove off. 

I planned to photograph these youngsters again 
when they were about to leave the nests, so I drove 
back there alone some days afterward. But I had 
waited just too long. My subjects were there, but they 
had left the nest and could fly from tree to tree, so that 
it would have required the help of a gun to capture 

141 



CROW RELATIVES 

them. On the way home I visited the other two nests, 
but the young had left the one in the tall chestnut, and 
in the hemlock nest all that was left was about half of 
one of the young ones. My friend the hawk had been 
finding the gentle art of eating crow not as disagreeable 
as some suppose. This was proper enough, in all 
justice, to avenge the pillaging of many a small bird's 
nest by the black rascals. 

The only way that I knew of at this late day to get 
young crows to photograph, was to hustle and find 
some. Truly I worked hard, but I had no success till 
I came across a friend who recently, while resting in 
some woods, had seen a crow fly to a nest in a low 
fork of a big chestnut tree. One may be sure I lost 
no time in having him show me the nest, the only 
delay being to examine the nest of an Ovenbird which 
fluttered from her eggs almost at my feet. All was 
silent at the crow's nest, but I took the camera with 
me up a sapling which grew beside the other tree, and 
saw three young crows almost fully fledged squatting 
low in the nest. They were too old to beg for food, 
having learned to fear, so I photographed them as they 
were, in the nest; then I climbed to the nest, took 
them down in a creel, photographed them on a log, and 
restored them to their home, though my friend was for 
wringing their necks. After I was gone I suspect that 
they went the way of all the world! 

Although the crow is usually a shy bird, it is perfectly 
possible to photograph it at the nest, provided that one 

142 



CROW RELATIVES 

find a nest favorably situated. I have not attempted 
it owing to pressure of other work, but once I placed 
a dummy camera close to a nest with young, and the 
old birds soon learned to ignore it and fed their off- 
spring. In the West the crows are much tamer than 
here in the East. Out in North Dakota, I have been 
able to walk within a few steps of crows incubating 
in low trees, and it probably would not have been very 
hard to photograph them, had I been able to take 
the time. 

Everyone knows how tame they become m severe 
winter weather when the snow is deep. Chilled and 
emaciated, they come close to houses and barns seeking 
food. Some years ago one came to a city street so 
exhausted that it could not fly, and I rescued it from 
a gang of cruel boys who were kicking it to death. I 
saw the remains of one on the snow in the woods, 
which a fox had eaten, as was shown by the many 
tracks, and they sometimes fall victims to hawks and 
owls. Near a certain hawk's nest recently, one lay 
dead on the ground, with the flesh of its breast torn 
out. Next day nothing was there but a few feathers. 

They breed quite early and it is time to find their 
eggs during the last half of April. In regions where 
there are pines they build in these, and high up, where 
the nests are generally hard to see from the ground. 
In such country as that where I now live, pines are 
scarce, and Ned and I hunt for crows' nests in decidu- 
ous trees or hemlocks. 

148 



CROW RELATIVES 

Most people do not realize that the Blue Jay is a 
member of the Crow family. But it is, and has all the 
mischievous, destructive, thieving instincts of the crow, 
and with a lot of audacity, or "cheek," thrown in for 
good measure. It robs the nests of other birds and is 
very unpopular with them. The appearance of a jay 
about their homes is the signal for the breaking forth 
of a general clamor, till the rascal, seeing that it is 
found out, beats a retreat. Hardy, like the crow, it is 
found throughout the year. Ordinarily it is rather shy 
about making friends with man, but it often shrewdly 
senses when it is wanted and comes to him for food in 
cold weather. A friend of mine puts peanuts in the 
shell out on his piazza roof, and early in the morning 
I have watched the jays come and eat down the peanuts 
whole, shucks and all. 

The Blue Jays' nest is a rather neat structure of twigs 
and rootlets and is built in some low tree in woods, 
swamp or pasture, and generally by early May contains 
four or five dark spotted eggs. Now and then a jay, 
especially when the young are hatched, is very bold in 
the defense of its home. There are many cases where 
the bird has braved the intruder and even allowed 
itself to be handled. But I have not yet had the good 
fortune myself to meet with such an individual. The 
nearest I came to it was with one which I found incubat- 
ing on the first day of May in a low crotch of a small 
tree at the edge of the woods, about as high up as my 
head. This jay allowed me to step up on a stump 

144 



CROW RELATIVES 

six or eight feet from her, but only because I moved 
very slowly. At that time I had a camera with only a 
small lens and short bellows, and the best I could get 
was a small picture, as she would not return while the 
camera was set up near the nest. 

Various friends of mine have beaten me on Blue Jay 
pictures, but some day I hope to get even with them. 
I tried to do this last spring and had most exasperating 
luck, though I made an encouraging start, finding three 
nests the first day I looked. Early in May I was going 
to a hawks' nest and passed some pasture cedars, 
bordering the woods, when I saw a jay go skulking 
from them. There was a nest near by, just ready for 
eggs. This set me to searching the cedars — always a 
favorite resort for jays — and further along I came upon 
a jay sitting on four eggs, and further still another 
on five. The birds were all shy, and, strange to say, 
a few days later, every nest was deserted or robbed. 
This only made me the more determined, and, one 
after another, I found six more nests, nine occupied 
nests in all, besides several other new ones that had 
been recently abandoned. But to be brief — not one of 
these pairs raised its family. Only three of them 
hatched, and in these cases the young disappeared 
before they grew a feather. I had not disturbed them 
in any way, save one pair at whose nest I set a dummy 
camera awhile, and I charged the mischief upon crows 
or other jays, though I have no means of definitely 
knowing. All I could do in line of pictures was to 

145 



CROW RELATIVES 

get a few snapshots with the reflecting camera of the 
jays that had young, as they scolded from the foliage 
above me. I shall keep on looking, though, and some 
fine day, I expect I shall find a bold pair of jays after 
my own heart. If Ned should succeed first, though, I 
know I should never hear the last of it. 

There is a group, or Family, of birds which comes 
next after the Corvidae, or Crows, called Icteridse, 
which means oriole-like birds. It includes the various 
blackbirds, so that it is easy to think of them along 
with the crow. One of its members is the Meadow- 
lark, which is really not a lark at all. The Family of 
true Larks comes in the classification just before the 
Crows, and, as we have just one species, we may as 
well mention it here with the Meadowlark. It is the 
Horned Lark, or Shore Lark. During the winter 
months they come down to us from the cold North, 
especially along the seacoast, on beaches or sand 
dunes. How I have enjoyed midwinter seashore 
strolls, and this pretty lark, with its salmon tints, 
black half -moon on the breast and curious little feathery 
"horns." They go in scattered flocks, often with the 
handsome white Snowflake, or Snow Bunting. We 
trace them by their mellow chirpings and find them 
here and there among the beach grass, picking up the 
seeds. Like enough we alarm them and away goes 
the flock all at once. For a while they circle about in 
the air, and finally return, perhaps, to nearly the same 
place. Inland they are not so common, yet we are 

146 




Blue Jay. "Incubating on the first day of May" (p. 144). 




Blue Jay. "Scolded from the foliage above me" (p. 146). 



CROW RELATIVES 

liable to run across them now and then in winter, in 
open fields, especially with flocks of Snow Buntings. 
There is also a pale Western form of this species called 
the Prairie Horned Lark. This occasionally breeds 
with us anywhere in the East, frequenting dry fields 
and barren pastures or hillsides. If one see a pale, 
bleached-looking lark, look out, for it is something 
worth while! A pair stopped one spring late in April 
about two miles from where I live. Ned kept track of 
them for me and often heard their sweet warbled songs. 
We surely thought they were intending to breed and 
spend the summer, but in two weeks they disappeared. 
In these same fields the Meadowlark is found, fairly 
commonly, but not as much so as it used to be. For- 
merly it was hunted as game, but now it is protected 
as one of our most valuable destroyers of grubs and 
insects that damage the grass land. About the middle 
of May they have eggs in a well-concealed nest in a 
bunch of dry grass, arched over on top. The male is 
very watchful and gives his sitting wife the alarm when 
he sees anyone coming, and at once she sneaks off 
without flying directly from the nest. Consequently 
the nest is very hard to find. But now and then I 
have taken the sentinel off his guard, especially in the 
evening, and by mere chance flushed the female from 
her eggs when I had almost trodden upon her. The 
farmer in mowing his fields is the most apt of anyone 
to find this hid treasure, for the bird often rears two 
broods, the last even as late as July or August. One 

147 



CROW RELATIVES 

farmer showed me a nest late in August which a day 
or two before I saw it had contained two unsound 
eggs and two young birds nearly grown. When I 
came, one of these had traveled off in the grass on his 
stout long legs, and somehow an egg had disappeared, 
but I photographed what was left, glad enough of the 
chance. 

The Western form of this species, called the Western 
Meadowlark, is a beautiful singer and is perhaps the 
most beloved of birds to the settler upon the vast 
prairie. And I, too, on my expeditions, have enjoyed 
them and their fine music. 

Next come our Orioles, and not everyone knows that 
we have two kinds. The brilliant Baltimore Oriole 
that builds its remarkable hanging nest from the tips 
of the elm boughs along our shaded town or village 
streets is the one that is so widely known. Very 
promptly each spring on the fourth to sixth of May, 
Ned and I hear its clear notes again, after its long trip 
to South or Central America and back since we last 
saw it. As with many birds, the males arrive some 
time before the females. But before long they are all 
here and mated, and then begins the making of their 
very remarkable suspended pouch nests. Everyone 
knows of the wonderful skill with which they weave 
into these structures all sorts of material in ways that 
would defy our ingenuity. When I was a boy my 
mother hung out some nice lace work from the window 
of our home, in the suburbs of Boston, to bleach and 

148 




Kusty Grackle. "Emitting a flood of saucy expletives" (p. 155). 




Nest of Meadowlark. "Photographed what was left" (p. 148). 



CROW RELATIVES 

dry. A pair of orioles were building a nest in the elm 
close by and they appropriated the lace. We never 
knew what had become of it till in the autumn a great 
gale blew down the branch on which hung the orioles' 
nest, and there was the lace woven into it so skillfully 
that it took a long time to get it out, somewhat the worse 
for wear. But we like to hang out less expensive 
material, strings and yarn, and see the orioles tug at 
it and carry it off to their nests. A little girl up in our 
section of the country had a fine scheme. She prepared 
warp and woof for the orioles' use, and to each piece 
tied a label with her name and the date. The orioles 
made good use of it and were willing to give her their 
free advertising, for a number of fluttering tags hung 
from the nest announcing that the firm of "Helen 
Pease" had supplied building material. 

The other species is the Orchard Oriole, a somewhat 
smaller bird, less brilliantly colored, and much rarer 
than the Baltimore. It is seldom seen further north 
than the latitude of southern New England. As its 
name implies, it is partial to orchards. There, in a 
pear or apple tree, often close to houses, it builds its 
nest, which is not so deep or elaborate as the Baltimore's, 
nor so pensile, and is made of dry grass. 

On a certain farm one or two pairs of both kinds of 
orioles were accustomed to build. Both of them liked 
the pear trees for a nesting site, but the brilliant bird 
also used the elms and the other the apple trees. It is 
a hard matter, usually, to photograph any orioles' 

J49 



CROW RELATIVES 

nest in situ. Many a nest hanging tantalizingly before 
me I have been unable to reach. But one year, on 
this farm, a pair of Orchard Orioles built their nest in 
the middle of a large apple tree, though among the 
topmost twigs, and it seemed as though here must be a 
chance for a picture, if ever I was to have one. After 
discussing the situation with Ned, we borrowed a tall 
ladder and set it up against the tree. Then I went up 
with camera and tripod to the top of the ladder and 
climbed into the slender boughs above. The only 
accessible side of the nest was shaded, so a short-timed 
exposure on the tripod was necessary. I managed to 
stick the spike of each tripod-leg into a slender branch 
or crotch, and, by keeping very still at the critical 
moments, fairly holding my breath, secured some good 
pictures. There were three well-grown young in the 
nest, and one picture shows an open bill projecting out, 
begging for food. After succeeding there, I placed 
two of the young on a branch in a more favorable 
position, and Ned and I both added pictures of young 
Orchard Orioles to our series. 

All our other species which are classed in this group 
of birds have some claim to be called Blackbirds. 
Even the prattling Bobolink often gets the name of 
"Skunk Blackbird" because the male is black and 
white. This interesting bird is a regular "Jekyll and 
Hyde" in leading a double life. As Bobolinks they 
arrive in early May and settle down in the meadows 
and clover fields for about ten weeks of love, song and 

150 




Nest of Orchard Oriole, with bill of young projecting (p. 150). 




Young Orchard Orioles. "Placed two . . . on a branch" (p. 150). 



CROW RELATIVES 

familiarity with men. But before July is out, presto, 
they are "Reedbirds," plain in dress, shy roamers in 
flocks, which levy toll upon the growing grain. 

It is no easy task to find the Bobolinks' nest, hidden 
away snugly in the long grass. The garrulous male 
gives warning of our approach and the female sneaks 
from the nest, so that in vain do we try to flush her. 
But Ned and I have learned a trick or two. We get a 
rope a hundred feet or more in length, and in the 
evening or on a rainy day, having secured permission of 
the owner of the land, course systematically over the 
fields the distance of the length of the rope apart, 
dragging it between us and watching its progress. 
Suddenly up goes a brown bird, perhaps midway along 
the rope where it has just swished over the grass. 
Keeping our eyes on the spot where it started, we drop 
the rope and hurry there, and, on hands and knees, 
presently find the frail nest of dry grass with its five or 
six handsomely marked eggs, or an equal number of 
thriving young for which the meadow has produced 
abundance of insect or other foods. 

Another of these quasi-blackbirds is that parasite, 
the enemy of the small birds, generally known as Cow- 
bird, but it is also called Cow Bunting, or even Cow 
Blackbird. The latter name it deserves well enough, 
for the male is shiny black, all but its brown head and 
neck. The "cow" part of its various names it has 
earned by its fondness for the company of cattle. I 
have seen them on the backs of the cattle like big flies 

151 



CROW RELATIVES 

— especially out West where there are plenty of both 
cattle and Cowbirds. They are good friends to the 
cattle because they pull out grubs or maggots from the 
animals' hides or sores, and thus perform a useful 
service. We can only wish that they were as helpful 
to their nearer relatives among the birds. But the 
existence of every Cowbird proclaims the death of a 
brood of useful destroyers of insects or weed-seeds, 
which have perished because of the strong and greedy 
parasite. The female Cowbird lays one egg or more 
in the nests of these other birds, and in the struggle for 
existence the young Cowbird always wins. In other 
chapters where figure the victimized species, I shall 
show how the parasite works and fares. 

The Red-winged or Swamp Blackbird is a familiar 
and abundant bird over most of the United States. 
Few fresh water marshes there are where we may not 
hear the "conk-a-ree" song or the harsh alarm note of 
this conspicuous bird. But common as it is, we must 
go where it lives in order to see it. A lady of my 
acquaintance thought that the Red-wings had decreased 
sadly in her vicinity; she had not seen one all that 
season. But that very day in walking to her home I had 
seen dozens of them in the meadows along the road. 

They begin nesting by the middle of May, and the 
nests are easy enough to find if one cares to don the 
long rubber boots and go wading. The Red-wings, 
both the black male with his flashy scarlet epaulettes 
and his somber-hued streaky wife, will be hovering 

152 




Male Bobolinks. "Settle down in the meadows" (p. 150). 




Five young Bobolinks in nest. "Found by dragging a rope" (p. 151). 



CROW RELATIVES 

excitedly overhead or scolding from perches near by. 
There are so many pairs to the average boggy swamp 
that it is no hard matter to find nests, either built in 
the grass on top of tussocks, or suspended among reeds 
or rushes. It is said to be hard to photograph the 
female on the nest, but if one have a reflecting camera 
and wade near their homes, he is reasonably sure of 
good camera shooting, taking the birds both in flight 
and after they alight. They are a hardy species and 
now and then appear even in midwinter as far north as 
southern New England. 

The Crow Blackbird is another common and widely 
known blackbird, though scientists have surrounded 
our old friend with some mystery by carving him up 
into Bronzed and Purple Grackle. If the specimen 
has the purple color of the neck and head extend down 
into the bronze color of the back, it is a Purple Grackle, 
but if the bronze is without purplish streaks, it is the 
Bronzed Grackle. One cannot, however, tell these 
races apart without shooting the birds, and for all but 
technical purpose the plain Crow Blackbird is good 
enough for most of us. With us it generally nests in 
gardens in towns, especially in evergreen trees, such as 
the Norway spruce. By the middle of May they have 
built their nests, which are much like those of the 
Robin, being lined with mud. There is quite a colony 
on the street where I live and every year the handsome 
birds are seen on our trees and lawns. Unfortunately 
they sometimes pull up sprouting corn, and this season 

153 



CROW RELATIVES 

in June some farmer whom they had annoyed put out 
poisoned grain in his field. The next day there were 
heaps of dead grackles under the trees where they 
nested and the young all starved. Not a single one 
was henceforth to be seen in the locality. It was a 
mean thing to do, for not only did it kill blackbirds, 
but probably various other more useful birds. 

Out in the wilder parts of the country I have found 
the grackles nesting in hollow trees. In one instance, 
near my home, I found a nest in a swamp. I was hiding 
to photograph a Green Heron on its nest, and watched 
a male grackle spread his wings and tail and "squeak" 
his love song in a tree above me. Presently I noticed 
the female low down sneak along through the alder 
bushes and go on to a nest in the low fork of a very 
small one which grew out of water. This nest was 
built only about a foot above the surface — a most 
unusual location. Yet the grackles resort all the time 
to this swamp to feed, and I was not surprised that one 
pair were sensible enough to break away from old fogy 
custom and locate by their base of supplies. 

The flocking of the grackles in August and early 
autumn is interesting. As I sit on my piazza I hear a 
rushing sound as of an approaching tempest, and with 
a chorus of harsh grating notes, a compact body of the 
black fellows almost darken the sky as they whirl past 
just over the treetops. Sometimes they alight and 
then our ears are regaled with a symphony as from a 
lot of unoiled axles of wheelbarrows. 

154 



CROW RELATIVES 

Our remaining species is the Rusty Blackbird. 
This is a little smaller than the last, about the size of 
the Redwings. The male is all black, which makes his 
white eyes conspicuous, while his mate is much less 
showy, of a dull rusty grayish brown. They are with 
us in April, on their way north, and then again rather 
late in the fall. None are known to nest further south 
than northern New England, but I have been at the 
Magdalen Islands in June when the young were just 
leaving their nests in the spruce swamps. These 
looked like Robins' nests and were built on the lower 
branches of the spruces. What a fuss the old birds 
made over my presence, not to lionize, but to berate! 
I took my revenge by setting up my camera near a 
small spruce and focussed on the top where the female 
Rusty was inclined to alight. The next time she did 
it I pulled the thread and caught her in the act, her 
open mouth emitting a flood of saucy expletives. This 
I shall use against her in court if the occasion ever 
requires it. 



155 



CHAPTER X 

A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

(Finches, Sparrows, etc.) 

THIS family of bird species, called by naturalists 
Fringillidse, or finch-like birds, comes the 
nearest to "flooring'' Ned of anything in bird 
study. Not only is it the largest group among our 
North American birds, including about one-seventh 
of all our species, but many of these species look so 
much alike, especially as one usually sees them afield 
— skulking in grass or thick foliage, and shy in the 
bargain — that it is a very difficult matter to identify 
them. Try it, for instance, in the autumn, along the 
country road, where swarms of little brownish birds 
are constantly flitting on ahead of you and diving out 
of sight into the grass or bushes. They are sparrows, 
you say. Yes, but what kind? I can think of at least 
a dozen species which may be represented in that one 
flock. After studying them more or less all my life, I 
have to confess that very, very many times I am unable 
to identify these restless, nervous, timid, nondescript, 
elusive little rascals in the fleeting glimpse at them 
which they allow. I tell Ned not to get discouraged, 

156 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

but just to do the best he can, and he will surely know 
a good deal about them, as, indeed, he already does. 

Not only are there sparrows, but grosbeaks, finches, 
buntings and various others. They are the great 
seed-eating group of birds, with strong cone-shaped 
bills, just adapted to splitting or cru3hing many kinds 
of seeds, or extracting them from various sorts of pro- 
tecting covers. I was trying to think out some easy 
way to help Ned memorize and classify this difficult 
family, and I finally hit upon one which makes it very 
clear to him. Taking the species in the order in 
which they are ranked in the Handbooks, we may 
think of them in three groups. The main group is in 
the middle, the sparrows, or sparrow-like finches — 
brownish-streaked birds, which mainly stay on or near 
the ground. Before these are put the hardy finches 
other than sparrows, which are found with us in winter, 
many of them coming from the far north — such as the 
Pine Grosbeak, Crossbills, Redpolls, Pine Siskin, 
Goldfinch, Snow Bunting, Purple Finch. After the 
sparrow group we find given the more southerly 
finches — the Chewink, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Car- 
dinal, Indigo-bird and several distinctly Southern 
species. This certainly simplifies the general plan 
and also helps one to remember the species, each of 
which it is then "up to" the bird student to learn. In 
telling of them in this chapter we will follow that 
order. 

About twice in every decade, I should think, there 

157 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

comes a winter when various birds from the far North 
visit us in good numbers, and notably the species in 
this first group of the finch family. Deep snow which 
covers up the tops of the weeds with their load of seeds, 
the failure of the spruces and other evergreens to bear 
cones, or both these events in conjunction, drive them 
south to us. When I was a boy, the winter of 1882-3 
first introduced me to these Northern visitors. I was 
out after them at every possible opportunity and what 
an exciting time I did have! 

As early as October the Pine Siskins arrived. They 
are closely related to the Goldfinch, but are easy to 
tell from them because they are streaked all over. I 
was out hunting partridge and woodcock, when, in an 
opening in the woods, I saw a very large flock of these 
birds, then new to me, alight on an isolated tree, fairly 
covering the branches. Trembling with excitement, I 
fired into the midst of them and am ashamed to tell 
now the number I killed. I have never seen so many 
together since, but have met them at various times, usu- 
ally along roadsides, or in woods where there were 
birches or hemlocks. They seemed to be very fond of 
the birch buds. Years later, in northern Nova Scotia, 
I found them in June on their nesting grounds. In the 
shade trees along the streets of Pictou, I saw them and 
heard them singing prettily — Northern Canary Birds, 
one might call them, for they and the Goldfinch are 
closely related to the Canary. 

In November the beautiful little Redpolls put in 

158 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

their appearance and in flocks were wandering around 
the stubble fields, feeding on the seeds of the various 
weeds. At a distance they look much like the Pine 
Siskin, or even the Goldfinch in winter plumage. But 
a closer view shows a pretty crimson patch on top of 
the head, and now and then there is one, an adult male, 
with a crimson wash over the breast. I remember 
that I took a very great fancy to them and all that 
winter I loved to watch the Redpolls. They are hardy 
birds, breeding in Greenland and the lands nearest 
the North Pole. 

But I was equally fond of the grosbeaks and cross- 
bills. The occasion when I first saw these species 
stands out in my memory among the great events of 
my life. I was walking home one afternoon that same 
bird-eventful winter, in December, along a street in 
Jamaica Plain, a suburb of Boston, when I saw a flock 
of a dozen birds, the size of Robins, eating the buds 
of a maple tree in a garden, just over the sidewalk. 
Hurrying on toward them, I saw that they were dark 
gray in color, with yellow on the heads and backs, 
except two, which were of a beautiful rosy hue. They 
were Pine Grosbeaks, the rosy ones being adult males. 
Though it seems that, on the whole, I never enjoyed 
life more than I do now, at the same time I realize that 
familiarity has probably made me incapable of ever 
experiencing again the intense, overpowering excite- 
ment and delight which I experienced in that first sight 
of the Pine Grosbeak, hardy denizen of the North, 

159 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

whose very presence pictured before my inflamed imag- 
ination the boreal solitudes in their silent, icy grandeur, 
as did just once the rare Evening Grosbeak. 

And the crossbills ! I was out sleigh riding in Brook- 
line and was driving on a road that led through a 
wooded estate, when I noticed a group of birds on a 
limb of a pine tree which extended out low over the 
road. I stopped the horse almost under the strange 
birds. Some were dull red or pink, some greenish, and 
a few of each sort had white bars on their wings. They 
were a mixed flock of White-winged and Red Cross- 
bills, birds the points of whose upper and lower mandi- 
bles of the bill cross one another. It would appear, 
with this seemingly awkward arrangement, as though 
they could not eat; yet here they were skillfully ex- 
tracting the seeds from the pine cones, their favorite 
diet. For five minutes or so I fairly devoured those 
rare birds with my eager eyes. 

The rest of that winter I revelled in the Northern 
birds, but it was not till several years afterward that I 
saw any more, so irregular are their occurrences. How- 
ever, they did reach us occasionally, and some years I 
held tryst with the crossbills and siskins in summer 
up in their Northern homes in the Maritime Provinces 
of Canada. One season they stayed with us very late. 
Pine Siskins visited the larch trees in my garden in 
May, and on the seventh of May I was amazed, while 
looking for birds in a pine grove, to have a flock of 
White-winged Crossbills fly up from the ground and 

160 




«£"X 



•w 



Tree Sparrow eating hay seed thrown on the snow. "The happy little fellow' 

(p. 165). 








Pine Grosbeak about to drink. "Our . . . constant visitors" (p. 161). 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

then stand and look at me from the lowest branches of 
the pines. Usually all these Northern birds have dis- 
appeared by the last of March or first of April. 

In the winter of 1899-1900 both the crossbills were 
abundant, especially the usually rarer White-winged 
bird. It was a beautiful sight to see a flock of them 
almost daily on my lawn, picking up maple seed or 
other food. They were fairly tame, yet never so much 
so as a pair of White-wings that I found on the top of 
Bird Rock, far out at sea, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 
These were so tame that I actually caught them as they 
fed on some oats which I put out on the grass for them. 
They were very much emaciated, so I put them in a 
cage to have a good meal, but there they acted so 
frightened that we let them go and they returned at 
once to the oats. While they munched away at a pile 
of these, like little horses, I set up a camera on the 
tripod within two feet of them and photographed them 
without alarming them in the least. 

Early one morning in January, 1907, Ned came 
rushing in to inform me that a flock of Pine Grosbeaks 
were right by the doorstep. Sure enough, there were 
half a dozen of them, feeding in the path where the 
heavy snowfall had been shovelled off. They seemed 
to be picking up little sticks and biting off the ends, but 
I soon found that these were the winged seeds of our 
ash and maple trees, from which they were extracting 
the kernels. From that time on till the middle of 
March, they were our almost constant visitors. They 

161 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

were so tame that it was quite easy to photograph them 
with the reflecting camera. I met one little boy in 
town carrying around a paper bag of salt, trying to 
catch grosbeaks by putting salt on their tails, which he 
had been told was the proper method ! Yet for all their 
familiarity they were timid in a way, for at any sudden 
noise, as of a wagon or a train, the flock would unitedly 
spring up with a twitter and a whir of wings and dart 
off, not to return for an hour or two. Sometimes there 
would be three dozen grosbeaks on our lawn at the 
same time, mostly gray birds, though once I saw seven 
rosy males. 

When they finally disappeared it really seemed 
lonely without their intimate companionship, but kind 
Nature provided a most appropriate substitute in an 
equally large flock of Purple Finches, which stayed 
w T ith us from late March pretty well through April. 
The carmine-hued males were, in this case, about equal 
in number to the somber females. After a time the 
flocks, which I often met in the woods as well as gar- 
dens, broke up into pairs, and presently they were nest- 
ing in scattered cedars or other evergreens in pastures 
or gardens. They are quite hardy birds and are some- 
times found as far north as New England in the dead 
of winter, though they are not as northerly as the 
species we have been describing. 

With them we may well associate the beautiful Gold- 
finch, sometimes, but improperly, called the Wild 
Canary. They are interesting birds, original in their 

162 




Female Rose-breasted Grosbeak incubating. "Let me work on her within a yard 

(p. 174). 




Pair of White-winged Crossbills. "Eating oats like little horses" (p. 161). 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

ways and no slaves to fashion. The male in summer, 
with his resplendent yellow and black plumage, is gay 
enough, yet he lays all this grandeur aside for the 
winter and goes garbed like his plainer wife. Hardy 
birds, they often flock about us through our coldest 
winters, and well might they be, we should think, 
among our earliest breeders. Yet they spend the 
spring and summer in play and at the last possible 
moment, as though it was a stupid task from which 
they shrank, they finally set to work to build nests and 
rear babies. The eggs are usually laid in a soft, dainty 
nest on a bush or sapling in a swamp or by the roadside 
in late July or early August. The young are not awing 
till well along in August and it is often pitiful, when 
September frosts come, to find the callow fledglings in 
the garden, barely able to flutter from their nest, 
chilled and piping plaintively. Ned called my atten- 
tion to some in this predicament on a very cold day, the 
fifteenth of September. That same year I photo- 
graphed a brood of them in a willow thicket beside 
the railroad track about the twentieth of August, and 
I tried hard to snap the parents feeding them, but 
when the camera was near the nest they would not 
approach, no matter how long I waited. 

It would be a great omission not to speak of the 
Snow Bunting, that hardy boreal bird which has well 
earned also the name Snowflake, from the whiteness of 
its plumage. I have seen them by hundreds on the 
wintry seacoast, on beach, marsh or sand dunes. I wish 

163 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

they were as common inland where I now live, yet 
they are there no strangers to Ned and me, whirring 
over the snow and the projecting stubble in open places. 
One very wintry day they afforded us a beautiful 
spectacle. We were out sleigh riding, on a road which 
followed the open summit of quite a high hill. A snow 
squall came up, driving fiercely in our faces. Pres- 
ently we saw what at first I thought was a cloud of the 
light, newly fallen snow stirred up by a squall of wind, 
blowing toward us across a weedy field. Instead it 
proved to be a large flock of Snow Buntings. Their 
advance guard were alighting to eat the seeds of the 
weeds, while those in the rear were continually flying 
over those ahead of them and themselves becoming 
leaders. Thus the flock rolled over and over as it were, 
like a great white wheel, ever advancing. 

Associating with the Snow Bunting we are liable 
occasionally to meet the Lapland Longspur, a bird of 
about the same size, but darker colored, the males 
black on the breast and throat. They are much rarer 
than the other, enough so to make it a red-letter day 
when one is identified. How delighted I was when I 
saw my first Lapland Longspur! I was driving in a 
sleigh in February, along a country road, when I saw 
three birds ahead of me feeding in the road. Two 
were clearly Snow Buntings, as their white wings 
showed. The other was unfamiliar. I drove up 
within a few feet of them and stopped. The stranger 
had buffy cheeks and some black on the breast. It was 

164 




Young Field Sparrows in nest. "On the ground" (p. 169). 




Young Goldfinches, ready to leave nest. "In a willow thicket" (p. 163). 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

not a Horned Lark and I instantly recognized the Lap- 
land Longspur, for which I had so long looked in vain. 

And now for the Sparrows. The Tree Sparrow, or 
Arctic Chippy and the slate-colored Junco, or Snow- 
bird, are the only native sparrows which are common 
in winter. We do not count that foreign pest, the 
English Sparrow, which does not deserve to be con- 
sidered as a bird, but rather as a feathered rat, a 
pestiferous mongoose to destroy bird life and drive out 
our beloved native birds. The pretty little warbled 
song which comes from the weedy patch or the line of 
shrubs or stubble along the fence on a bitter cold 
February morning is the good cheer of the happy little 
fellow from the far north, the Tree Sparrow, and it is 
almost the only real song that we are likely to hear at 
this season, though the Chickadee has some pleasant 
notes, and the Junco will begin in March to practice 
its simple trill. The Tree Sparrows are a bit timid, 
but I have had them come up on the window-sill 
to be fed and photographed. Ordinarily, though, they 
will not venture quite so much, but we can scatter hay- 
seed or small grain on the frozen snow in the garden 
and they will greatly appreciate it. Associated with 
them we shall often see the Junco, which is even shier. 

A few of that commonest of our sparrows, the Song 
Sparrow, linger in sheltered places through the long 
cold winter, and the whole tribe of them are back in 
March. Early in the month we first hear their familiar 
and beautiful song ringing out from the shrubbery 

165 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

along the roadsides, or in the garden. One can dis- 
tinguish them by their heavily marked breast with a 
conspicuous brown spot in the middle. 

Soon after the middle of March we are likely to notice, 
on the edge of the woods, or along retired wooded 
roads, a bird of deep rich brown color. It is the Fox 
Sparrow, the largest and handsomest of the sparrows. 
It is fond of scratching among the dead leaves, and is 
a great musician, though, unfortunately, it seldom sings 
until it approaches its Northern breeding grounds, for it 
never remains with us. I have twice found its large, 
well-built nest on the Magdalen Islands and have heard 
there many a time its wonderful song. 

Probably the next to arrive will be the Swamp Spar- 
row, late in March. It frequents bushy swamps or 
meadows interspersed with brush, and, though it 
resembles the Song Sparrow, can be readily distin- 
guished from it by its reddish head and unmarked 
ashy breast. The song is a loud, simple trill, not unlike 
that of the Junco. The rare Lincoln's Sparrow, related 
closely to this and the Song Sparrow, is also possible 
reward for careful scrutiny. 

Late in March or early in April comes the Field 
Sparrow, and about the middle of April the nearly 
related Chipping Sparrow. These and the Tree Spar- 
row are a good deal alike — slender, long-tailed little 
fellows, with brownish-red crowns. The best way to 
distinguish them is that the Tree Sparrow has a con- 
spicuous dark spot on the middle of the breast, the 

166 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

Field Sparrow a plain breast and reddish bill, the 
Chippy a distinct white stripe over each eye and a gray 
rump, with the whitest breast of them all. 

About the same time as the Field Sparrow, or soon 
after it, comes the Vesper Sparrow, or Grass Finch, with 
its simple but pretty song. This is the species with the 
bay-colored patch on the bend of the wing and the 
white outer tail feathers. This last is especially char- 
acteristic of the Junco, but one cannot confuse that 
slate-colored bird with the brownish Vesper, and at any 
rate the former disappears on its northward migration 
soon after the other begins to arrive. 

Somewhat similar in haunts and habits is the Savanna 
Sparrow, which also arrives in early April. They are 
found in dry open fields, but also in meadows or salt 
marshes. They have streaked breasts, like the Song 
Sparrow, but are smaller birds. In most inland locali- 
ties they are not common, but in many seacoast regions, 
and notably along the Northern coast, any sparrow 
which one may see is more than likely to be a Savanna. 
They haunt the grassy wind-swept headlands or even 
the sand dunes. 

On the coast we also may meet the Sharp-tailed and 
Seaside Sparrows on the salt marshes, skulking in the 
long grass, and in late fall and winter the rather rare 
Ipswich Sparrow. I have found a number of the latter 
in dry open places not far back from the sea, or on 
islands. 

But we have not yet exhausted the possibilities of the 

167 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

migration inland. There is a very queer little fellow 
called the Grasshopper Sparrow, so named because its 
funny weak little song sounds more like this insect's 
attempt than a bird's. It is a small bird, dull-colored, 
with plain ashy-colored under-parts and is very secre- 
tive, one of the hardest of birds to locate and observe. 
It frequents dry fields, but might be common all about 
one without its presence being detected, unless one 
noticed the faint, locust-like song. A somewhat similar 
bird, but rarer, is the Henslow's Sparrow, which, how- 
ever, prefers moist grass land, notably springy hillsides 
where the bush known as shrubby cinquefoil abounds. 

Last of all, in May, come those beautiful sparrow 
migrants, the White-throated and White-crowned Spar- 
rows, both of which nest well to the north. The latter 
is rather rare, more's the pity, for it is a very striking 
bird, with its conspicuously white crown-patch. It is 
only once in a great while that I am able to see one. 
The White-throat is much better known. The male 
has a pronounced white bar on each side of the head, 
and sometimes may be mistaken for the other. But 
when one really meets the White-crown, he will know 
it. "Pee, pee, peabody, peabody," sings the White- 
throat in long-drawn, high-pitched piping, and thus 
gains the name of Peabody-bird. The male sings his 
peabody song vociferously in Maine and Canada, but 
I have heard it all too seldom further south. 

There, now, we have gone through with every one of 
our numerous Sparrows which we are at all likely to 

168 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

meet. Do you suppose now you can go out and 
identify them? Remember there are the confusing 
plumages of the young, which help to make the muddle 
all the worse. No, you must study hard on them, be 
patient, and get to know them one at a time. With a 
little intelligent care, and referring to the descriptive 
books, you will be surprised how quickly the common 
birds can be tolerably well learned. So there is no 
need of being discouraged. If we could learn every- 
thing easily at once, there would be far less fun in 
studying birds. We need some difficulties to arouse 
the spirit of true sport. 

When it comes nesting time the nests of most of the 
sparrows are to be sought and found on the ground, 
and usually in grass. The Chippy, however, builds in 
a tree or bush near the house, though once I found its 
nest on the ground in an orchard. The Song Sparrow 
sometimes gets lofty ideas and builds in a bush even as 
high as one's head, but the vast majority of nests are on 
the ground in grass or beside a bush. This is the nest 
with four or five darkly blotched eggs which one so 
often finds in the pasture or by the roadside by almost 
stepping on it and having the sitting bird pop off at 
one's very feet. 

In wading the meadow, I expect to start the Swamp 
Sparrow from its nest in the tussock. The Field Spar- 
row likes the clump of weeds in pasture or orchard for 
the temporary home, and it will be either on the ground 
or within a foot of it among the stems of the weeds or 

169 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

in a tiny sprout. The eggs are smaller and more finely 
marked than those of the Song Sparrow, and thus can 
be distinguished. 

It is not so easy to find the Vesper Sparrow's nest, 
though it is built usually where the grass is scant, for 
the bird sees an intruder and usually flies off before he 
comes dangerously near. 

The Savanna Sparrow, though it often builds in 
similar situations, is more tame and less shrewd, and 
I have found their nests by dozens through flushing 
them, in regions where they are common, as on open 
headlands by the sea. But the Grasshopper Sparrow 
— how it can hide its treasures! I have found but one 
of their nests and it was on this wise. I was crossing 
•a dry, sandy field, with very sparse grass, when out 
fluttered a small sparrow right from my very feet. Of 
course I knew there was a nest, though none was in 
sight. Down I dropped on hands and knees, laying 
my handkerchief on the grass about where the bird 
was first seen. I felt like a fool when, after a quarter 
of an hour spent in examining every inch of ground, I 
could not for the life of me find the nest. The only 
thing to do was to withdraw, mark the spot and try 
again. So in half an hour I came back and this time 
I saw exactly where the bird flushed. But even then 
it was a couple of minutes before I detected the tiny 
tunnel, overhung by dry grass which led in under a 
small tussock. There, clear out of sight, was the 
simple nest of grass with its five white, sparsely marked, 

170 




SI 







A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

handsome eggs, very different from those of our other 
sparrows. 

Sparrow's eggs are usually so much alike that in 
most cases it is necessary to identify them by clearly 
seeing their owners, and often this is a very difficult 
task. I have spent hours waiting or searching about, 
trying to make the secretive, skulking bird show herself. 
Even if the pesky thing does come out for an instant, 
it is more than likely that it will be gone again before 
the glass can be brought to bear. 

Almost everyone who lives in the country has the 
pleasure of seeing the familiar Chippy nest on the 
premises, in perfect confidence of good treatment. 
Chippy nests in my orchard, on any bush or low tree 
in the garden, or even on my piazza porch in the wood- 
bine. There I took her picture while she gazed at me 
beseechingly, hoping that I had not now become her 
foe. This last spring a pair built their nest on the 
trellis right at the entrance of our front door, but there 
was so much passing that the little bird became fright- 
ened and the eggs were not laid there. 

Chippy is a good subject to photograph in the act of 
feeding her young. Some sparrows are too shy and 
nervous to brave the camera, but she will do it. A 
pair had a nest in our mulberry tree, and on the day 
that the four little fellows left the nest I caught two of 
them and made them sit on a stick in front of the 
camera which was all ready for business. At first 
mother Chippy was a little afraid, but she soon plucked 

171 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

up courage and at frequent intervals came with an 
insect and fed the little fellows in turn. In a short 
time I had a dozen as good feeding pictures as I could 
want. 

Leaving the Sparrows, now, to be studied afield, I 
must tell a little about that other group of birds in this 
finch family which we referred to at the beginning of 
the chapter as the more southerly fellows which are 
large of beak. The next one after the sparrows, as 
numbered in the American Ornithologists' Union 
Check List, is the handsome and common bird variously 
known as Towhee or Chewink, and I have also heard 
it called Swamp Robin. This is the black and white 
fellow, with brown markings, who plays hide and seek 
with us in the bushy pasture, the scrub land, or along 
the roadside. He is bound to see who you are, but 
does not intend that you shall see him very much, 
though he calls out a pert inquiring "tow-hee," or 
"chewink," as he seems to different observers to say. 
But when he thinks there is no one around to bother 
him, he stands up proudly on the top of a bare tree 
that towers above the thicket of scrub and sings a 
happy and more pretentious song. The nest is hidden 
away in a brush heap or under a small bush and about 
the only way I know of finding it is to flush from it the 
brownish female, who will soon return with her black- 
gowned husband and set up a great outcry. Once I 
was shown a nest out in the open in the hollow of a 
grassy bank in a pasture. The female was in charge 

172 




Nest of Chippy. "On my porch in the woodbine" (p. 171). 




Chipping Sparrows. "Fed the little fellows in turn" (p. 172). 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

of the five pretty eggs and allowed me to come quite 
near, but she crouched down so deep into the hollow 
that a picture showed nothing but her bill. 

Then there is the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. The 
male is a beautiful black and white bird with a rose- 
colored spot on his breast and under each wing, and is 
a sweet singer, with clear, liquid notes. But the female 
is a plain brownish little lady, looking like an enlarged 
sparrow. They are moderately common in many local- 
ities, and it would be well if they were more so, for 
they have a habit which will commend them to all who 
know of it. If they are seen in the garden, do not as- 
sume that they are working mischief ; though sometimes 
they eat buds, they are mostly insectivorous and are 
among the few birds that will eat potato bugs. I have 
known them to go day after day to the potato patch to 
feed upon these vermin as long as they lasted. I tell 
Ned that they are more useful in that line than he, for 
he is not fond of "picking potato bugs," though his 
mother tells that when he was a baby she found him 
one day munching a horrid black squash bug. But in 
time he proved not to be insectivorous after all ! 

This grosbeak builds a frail nest of small sticks and 
rootlets in a low tree or bush in a swamp or thicket, 
usually from five to ten feet from the ground. Both 
birds incubate and they are not very shy, only the nest 
is rather hard, usually, to get at to photograph, unless 
one raise the camera on stilts and focus, say, from a 
step-ladder. In one case a nest was out on a horizontal 

173 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

bough and I bent it down and tied it so that the nest 
was on a level with my camera on the fully extended 
tripod. When I came, sometimes the male was on, 
but more often the female. He would not let me walk 
up with the camera, but she allowed me to do so and 
even to work on her within a yard, if I moved slowly 
and kept very quiet. 

Still another interesting and striking species is the 
Indigo-bird, or Indigo Bunting. It is a small species, 
of sparrow size, the male of which is of a rich dark 
blue color all over, very gaudy and conspicuous. One 
would not suppose that the dull brownish female could 
be any near relative of his. They are fond of bushy 
pastures and the neat nest is suspended in a thicket or 
brier patch. One that I found was beautifully lined 
with black horse-hair. Another was discovered through 
the anxiety of the male that I should not find it. I was 
passing through some scrub and brier thicket one hot 
day in June, looking for nests to photograph. Sud- 
denly this male Indigo-bird appeared on a poplar tree 
near by and began to advise me in his language that 
the best thing I could do was to get right straight out. 
Instead of doing this, I began to look about all the 
more sharply and soon I found his nest, nearly com- 
pleted, close to where I had just passed. Later it held 
three bluish-white eggs. I photographed them, but 
could not catch either of the birds with the lens, though 
I hid the camera quite well in a clump of bushes near 
by, covering it with foliage. 

174 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

In the Middle States, up as far as New York City, 
we may see the brilliantly colored male Cardinal Gros- 
beak and his more somber-clad mate. Their beautiful 
songs are a delight about the garden, and their nest 
may be found in the adjoining shrubbery. The further 
south we go the more plenty they become. During 
my trips to the South I have greatly enjoyed the 
Cardinal. 

Besides the Cardinal, there are other distinctly 
Southern species in this family of which it is beyond 
my present purpose to write. But instead, seeing that 
I mentioned above the American Ornithologists' Union, 
and also the difficulty of studying such birds as this 
finch family, I want to advise every one of my bird- 
loving readers to become an associate member of this 
organization, if he or she has not already done so. 
Though it is the greatest ornithological society of 
America, and includes in its membership the leading 
scientists, it is intended just as much for beginners in 
bird study, to increase and cultivate the friendly interest 
in birds which has now become so widespread. Its 
'Associate" class of members numbers many hundreds, 
all over the United States and Canada, including boys 
and girls, and ladies as well as men. My young friend 
Ned is an enthusiastic "Associate," and it helps him 
very much. Through it he knows many other bird- 
lovers. Its large quarterly magazine, The Auk, the 
leading bird publication in America, which everyone 
belonging to it receives, is very instructive and enables 

175 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

him to keep up with whatever is being done by other 
students. Now and then he goes to its "Annual Con- 
gress," which is a most delightful social occasion. 
There he gets acquainted with many other young 
ornithologists, and also with the great scientists, who 
are glad to see all who are beginning to take interest 
in birds, no matter how little they know about the 
subject at present. It costs three dollars a year as 
membership fee, which includes subscription for The 
Auk, and I hope that many young bird lovers, or others, 
after reading this will write to the Treasurer of the 
A. O. XL, Dr. Jonathan Dwight, 134 West 71st Street, 
New York City. He will send you any desired informa- 
tion. The more membership fees the Union has, the 
better magazine they can publish, with more illustra- 
tions, and the more they can do for bird study and bird 
protection. 

If you could only have a talk with Ned, I am sure he 
would soon persuade you to join and make you feel 
that because you love birds you are just exactly the 
kind of a person that they want on the roll of member- 
ship. 

Both he and I want also to say a good word for the 
Audubon Society, whose special work is to interest in 
birds those who have not thought much about them, 
to train the growing generation of children and youth 
to love and befriend the birds, and to secure money, 
laws and public sentiment for their protection. In each 
State there is a local Audubon Society, all of which 

176 



A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 

are incorporated as "The National Association of 
Audubon Societies." For a few cents annually any- 
one can be a member, and for a dollar a year more 
have that delightful little illustrated magazine, Bird- 
Lore, the organ of the Association, which every beginner 
in bird study ought to have and all bird lovers as 
well. To secure further funds for the educational and 
humanitarian crusade, for enforcement of protective 
laws, for guarding breeding-colonies of birds and the 
like, there are various degrees of honorary membership, 
attainable through certain money payments. Inquiries 
addressed to the headquarters of the Association, the 
office of its President, Mr. William Dutcher, 141 Broad- 
way, New York City, will secure all information needed. 
Those who take delight in our wild birds and are in- 
terested in their protection will both get and give a 
great deal by being associated in these organized ways 
with other bird lovers, and "the sport of bird study" 
will thus be found far more fascinating than by "going 
it alone." 



177 



CHAPTER XI 

OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS AND SWIFTS 

NED came into my study one summer day, when I 
was trying to write a bird article, just as I made 
a slap at a tormenting housefly and almost 
upset my inkstand. "Your intention was good," he 
remarked, "but you aren't as graceful as the swallows 
yet in your fly-killing. But how did so many flies get 
in here?" "Oh, someone left the screen door open," I 
replied; "that is one reason, and, since you have men- 
tioned swallows, you remind me of another, and that 
is that we haven't swallows enough to catch all these 
flies. If they were as common as they used to be, I 
don't think there would be so many flies to bother us." 
"Did they use to be very plenty?" inquired Ned. "Yes," 
I said, "according to all accounts the familiar kinds 
were quite abundant up to about twenty years ago, when 
the hateful English Sparrow drove them away by 
fighting them or taking their nests. I remember well 
when I was small what lots of swallows there were 
around Boston, where I lived, far more than there are 
now. Of course I don't mean to say that there weren't 
any flies then, but there was a big colony of Barn and 
Eave Swallows on our next door neighbor's barn, and 

178 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

with such a swarm catching flies all day about our 
place you couldn't make me believe that there were not 
less flies than there would have been without them." 

"Don't they catch other insects beside flies?" asked 
Ned, becoming evidently interested. "Yes," I told 
him, "they are great on mosquitoes and about every 
sort of small flying insect. The Government ornithol- 
ogists of the Biological Survey say that in the South 
swallows feed upon the dreaded boll weevil, and they 
are getting up a crusade to try to protect the swallows 
and introduce them to regions from which they have been 
driven out. One good method is to kill off the English 
Sparrows around their colonies, and also to put up 
suitable boxes for the kinds that use them. Of course 
boys ought not to disturb them, and the owners of barns 
where they build should welcome them, even though 
they make some dirt to clean up. They are well worth 
any trouble they may cause." 

After this little talk about swallows, Ned helped me 
drive out the flies so that there would be none of them 
on my bird article, and I went to work again in peace. 
Besides helping me in this swallow-like occupation of 
chasing flies, Ned promised to go with me that after- 
noon and help me photograph a nice Barn Swallows' 
nest with four nearly fledged young, which were now 
about to leave. 

It was a pretty hard proposition, Ned thought, when 
he saw the nest, on the projecting end of a timber inside 
a barn, away up under the roof where it was quite dark 

179 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

and almost inaccessible. However, I thought there was 
a way. We got a long ladder, and I climbed up on a 
beam which went rather near the nest. I pulled the 
ladder up after me and placed it across two beams. 
Then Ned handed me up some boards and I made a 
little platform on the ladder to stand the camera and 
tripod upon. The camera set up on the tripod could 
now stand close to the nest, but it was too dark even 
to focus. However, I was ready for that difficulty. I 
had brought a good-sized mirror, and now I asked Ned 
to stand just outside the barn door in the strong sun- 
light and throw up the reflected light upon the nest. 
It was easy now to focus. Then I held up a smaller 
mirror which I carried in my pocket and had Ned 
throw the light on my mirror, and I in turn threw it 
down into the nest upon the backs of the young birds, 
and thus I made some successful quite short exposures. 
Then I brought down a young swallow, posed and 
photographed it outdoors, put it back into the nest, 
and the work was done, and well done — thanks to my 
valuable assistant. 

Probably the Barn Swallow is the best known of the 
six species found in our Northern and Eastern districts 
— the bird with the forked tail, reddish breast and 
shiny blue-black upper parts. They build nests of 
mud and straw on beams inside barns and sheds. The 
settlement of North America by the white man has 
changed the habits of many of the birds, notably the 
swallows, and among them this particular kind. Its 

180 




Young Barn Swallows. "Threw light down into the nest" (p. 180). 




Young Barn Swallow. "Brought down a young Swallow" (p. 180). 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

original preference was for rocky caves as a nesting site. 
Just once in my life have I found a nest thus situated. 
It was in a cave on lonely Seal Island, which lies twenty 
miles off the rugged coast of Maine, in Penobscot Bay. 

Our Barn Swallow is such a happy, friendly bird that 
nearly everyone who knows it loves and admires it. 
We enjoy its merry twitterings as it darts about the 
barn, and are pleased at the grace with which this 
greyhound of the air doubles and turns. When we go 
out for a drive, it is a pretty sight to see them circle 
about us, catching the insects which our advance starts 
from the grass or weeds along the country roadside. 

Perhaps next in familiarity comes the Eave or Cliff 
Swallow. This is the other kind which frequents the 
barns. Ii builds bottle-shaped nests of mud pellets 
up under the eaves, which are often clustered thickly 
together and partly built one upon the side of the other. 
In the primitive days these colonies of nests were built 
on cliffs, and in some parts of the West they are built 
there even yet. So the bird is the genuine Cliff Swallow 
out there, and the Eave Swallow with us. Originally 
there were no Cliff Swallows where there were no cliffs, 
but with the country's settlement they spread nearly 
everywhere, and the dates are on record when they 
first appeared in various localities. This bird looks 
quite different from the Barn Swallow, and can be told 
by its nearly square tail, the pale reddish patch at the 
base of the bill and on the upper rump, and the light 
under-parts. 

181 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

I have photographed the nests by putting up a ladder 
under the eaves, driving my screw bolt into the side of 
the barn, screwing the small camera to it and making 
long-timed exposures, since the nests are in the shade. 
To get the adult birds from life, I await quietly beneath 
the nests on some low barn, with my reflecting camera 
in hand, and snap the birds as they fly to their nests. 
When the young are just beginning to fly they are quite 
tame and one can often walk up close to them with the 
camera. 

The nests of many swallows get very lousy, like the 
Phcebes', and it was owing to this that I once had a 
rather severe punishment for meddling with the Eave 
Swallows when I was a boy. I wanted some swallows' 
eggs, and, after climbing up to some nests by means of 
a ladder, was trying to get my fingers into the narrow 
entrance of one of them, when down came the nest and 
smashed all over my bare head. In a moment I was 
swarming with bird lice from head to foot — and what 
a time I did have ! It was days before I got rid of them 
all, and I was sore in every member from their bites 
and my scratching. Fortunately it was vacation time, 
and I was able to keep aloof from most of mankind. 

Then there is the Tree Swallow, the kind with the 
pure white breast and glossy steel-blue back. How 
they used to swarm on the marshes and on the telegraph 
wires, when I was a boy, in August when they were 
getting ready to migrate ! But now their numbers seem 
pitifully small in comparison. Originally they nested 

182 




Eave Swallows. "Snap the birds as they fly to their nests" (p. 182). 




Fledgling Eave Swallow. "Just learning to fly" (p. 182). 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

in cavities of trees. Then, in well settled localities, 
they changed to the bird boxes which kindly disposed 
people put up for them. But the English Sparrow 
came and drove them out, and now they have gone 
back to the hollow trees again. 

Out in North Dakota, I have seen pairs of them 
flying in and out of hollows in low trees along the 
shores of rivers and lakes, and I was wishing that I 
had taken the time to photograph them. So it was 
pleasant to me to find a colony of them near my home 
nesting in stubs in the overflowed woodland where I 
have told of the woodpeckers nesting so abundantly. 
Some of the stubs which they had chosen stood out in 
pretty deep water and the holes were rather high up. 
I was standing on the "corduroy" roadway across the 
swamp and wondering how in the world I was going to 
work it to get some pictures, when I saw a Tree Swallow 
fly into a hole near the top of a low stub only about five 
feet from the water, the stub being only a yard out from 
the road. I waited two weeks or more till the young 
were hatched, and then with my reflecting camera and 
a lot of plate holders, I paid a visit to the nest. The 
male bird sat on a low branch of another stub, quite 
near the nest hole, and let me walk quietly up and snap 
him. He flitted to another stub and I got some more 
pictures of him. Meanwhile the female flew to the 
nest with a fly, so I sat down on the edge of the roadway 
partly behind a bush, with the camera on my knees, 
aimed at the nest. For a few minutes the birds flew 

183 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

about twittering, excited by my presence. But I sat 
still, and presently the male ventured. I snapped him 
as he approached the stub, and he flew back without 
entering. But in a moment he alighted at the entrance 
with a fly, and, not heeding the sound of the shutter, 
entered, fed the young, and emerged carrying a sac of 
excrement. By this time I had changed the plate and 
caught him as he left. Then the female came, and 
they were constantly going and coming, giving me all 
the snapshots I wanted. Later, when the five young 
were about ready to leave, I took out two of them and 
posed them, and then put them carefully back into the 
hole. 

One day I came out from the woods on the adjoining 
hill, hundreds of feet above this morass, overlooking 
the whole tract. It was a lovely panorama of high 
rolling hills, with two lakes nestling in the valley, and, 
aided by my strong field glass, I actually could see the 
old woodpecker hole in the swallow stub, and see the 
swallows enter and leave the cavity as they fed their 
young. 

Still another familiar species is the Bank Swallow, 
the small brownish fellow that digs out burrows in 
gravel banks near ponds or streams. They are quite 
common, and a number of banks or cuts in my neigh- 
borhood each boast of a little colony of a dozen or more 
pairs. The birds arrive toward the end of April, and 
presently go to work digging their burrows, and then 
make trips to poultry yards to pick up feathers with 

184 





Tree Swallow (male) at nest. Tree Swallow. "Snapped him as he 

"Alighted at the entrance with approached the stub" (p. 184). 

a fly" (p. 184). 




Young Tree Swallows. "About ready to leave" (p. 184). 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

which to make soft lining for the nests, that the very 
fragile pure-white eggs which are to be deposited may 
not be broken. 

One day I visited a colony situated in a gravel cut, 
just off a main road. The burrows were not deep, and 
from one of them I took out a parent bird which was 
incubating, having previously set up my camera 
focused on a hole, and, placing it at the entrance, 
secured a snapshot before it escaped. Meanwhile I 
had allowed the horse to graze by the roadside un- 
hitched, watched over by Ned. Just ahead there was 
a rise of ground and a turn in the road. I had not 
thought about the possibility of an automobile coming 
along, but, as luck would have it, one came just then, 
going at very moderate speed. Before I could get back 
the horse broke away from Ned, shied into the fence, 
and then dashed off with the shafts, leaving the rest of 
the vehicle hung up. The animal only ran to the next 
farmyard, where it stopped and was caught. The 
driver of the machine was a gentleman. He stopped, 
proffered assistance, gave his number, and so on. 
Though I was out a buggy, I did not sue him, as he 
had been so polite, and I was at fault for leaving the 
horse as I did. But the country roads are very narrow, 
and these engines put residents and visitors in the 
country in jeopardy of their lives. It is not only ill- 
mannered, but lawless and criminal for anyone to 
invade country roads with an automobile and not drive 
with the utmost care, stop when he is asked by the 

185 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

driver of a horse, and in every way be considerate, in 
view of the peril to life and limb which he is creating. 
Machines are impracticable in the country for at least 
half the year, and people living there are compelled 
to keep horses. Were all autoists gentlemen like this 
one just mentioned, people in the country would not 
be put to as much inconvenience and danger as at 
present they suffer, many, especially women and chil- 
dren, being afraid to drive or ride out, and thus are 
compelled to stay at home. 

There is another swallow, similar in appearance and 
habits to the Bank Swallow, which is not so well known 
— the Rough-winged Swallow. They are not often 
seen north of the Middle States and are common only 
in the West. At a distance they are distinguishable 
from the Bank Swallow mainly by being a little larger 
and having uniformly dark under-parts. Frequently 
they nest on the timbers under bridges, or in crevices 
of abutments, although they also nest like the Bank 
Swallow. Even Audubon did not distinguish them 
from Bank Swallows until he happened to shoot some 
specimens. So it will be well to watch for them among 
the supposed Bank Swallows, and some day we may 
add this rather rare bird to our list. 

Some people call the Tree Swallow the Martin, but 
the genuine Martin is the Purple Martin, a larger 
species, the male of which is entirely of a dark glossy 
steel-blue color, the female duller, and paler below. 
They are beautiful and useful birds, but unfortunately 

186 




Purple Martins near their nest in hole of stub. " Took a picture of a pair" (p. 187). 




Bank Swallow at nest — hole in gravel hank. "Secured a snapshot" (p. 185). 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

are very tender, and late cold storms, combined with 
the attacks of the English Sparrow, have almost ex- 
terminated them in the New England States. In 
populated regions at present they generally breed in 
bird-boxes which people are glad to prepare for them. 
Sometimes, after prolonged cold rain storms in June, 
whole colonies of Martins, old and young alike, have 
been found dead in their nesting boxes. I never see 
them now except as migrants. Their original manner 
of nesting was in hollow trees, like the Tree Swallow. 
Out in the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota I once 
found them breeding quite plentifully in the poplar 
timber, and took a picture of a pair of them as they 
alighted on the branch of a stub near their nest cavity, 
an old woodpecker hole. 

We have just one more bird to tell of in this chapter, 
the one that people persist in calling the Chimney 
Swallow. In general appearance and habits it is 
swallow-like, but in structure it is quite different, and 
belongs to the family called Swifts. So let us get 
used to calling it by its right name, Chimney Swift, 
and be accurate. 

Its feet are so weak and cramped that it does not 
perch, but clings to a perpendicular surface, such as 
the inside of a chimney or a hollow tree, propping itself 
from behind with its peculiar tail, each feather of which 
ends in a sharp spine or spike. But in flight it is master 
of the situation, and well deserves its university degree 
of Swift. Almost ceaselessly, oftentimes by night as 

187 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

well as day, it is awing, tireless in pursuit of flying 
insects. It has been estimated that each swift flies a 
thousand miles every day, yet it never seems to weary. 

Under primitive conditions, before the settlement of 
the country, the swift resorted to hollow trees for rest, 
shelter and nesting. But now it seldom occupies any 
other retreat than a chimney. In the autumn, when 
flocking preparatory for its migration south, I have 
seen assemblages of them at dusk drop into some 
selected chimney in a steady stream, until thousands 
must have been clinging to every available inch of 
brick inside. 

They return to us about the last of April, but are 
late in nesting, for ordinarily the eggs are not laid till 
July. During June they may be seen darting over the 
dead tops of trees, hardly pausing an instant in their 
flight as they grasp and wrench off a twig. Having 
secured one, the bird takes it down the chimney and 
sticks it to the brick wall with gummy saliva, which 
she ejects. This is continued till the curious basket- 
like structure has been completed, and then four or 
five elongated pure white eggs are laid. Many acci- 
dents occur. Rains wash down the nest, or the young 
fall down into the fireplace or pipe below, where they 
are likely to be left to starve. The brood of swifts 
make considerable racket, and the descent of the old 
birds into the chimney causes a rumbling sound like 
distant thunder. They drop a good deal of dirt, too, 
down the chimney. But they amply pay for their 

188 




Young Chimney Swifts by their nest. "Clinging . . . like so many bats" 

(p. 189). 




Young Chimney Swift. "How they cling and brace themselves" (p. 189). 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

misdemeanors in the multitude of flies and mosquitoes 
which they destroy. 

It is a hard matter to photograph a nest, owing to 
the narrowness of the chimneys. But I was fortunate 
in happening upon a very peculiar nesting site. A 
pair of swifts chose to build in a barn. Up near the 
top of the hayloft, near an open window, for the past 
three years they have stuck their curious nest to the 
plain board wall inside. The first year they raised but 
one youngster and the next season four. The third 
season they built the nest, but for some reason did not 
lay the eggs there. 

I photographed this nest in the same way that I 
photographed the young Barn Swallows, with the help 
of Ned, the ladder and the mirrors. The second year 
I paid my visit when the young had just crawled from 
the nest and were clinging to the boards near it like so 
many bats. One flew off, but I photographed the 
other three, and then put one back in the nest and took 
a picture of it there. After that I carried one outdoors 
in the light and took some pictures showing in detail 
how they cling and brace themselves with the tail. 

A pair of them build every year in one of my chimneys, 
and this year, for some reason, the eggs did not hatch. 
Ned wanted to get them as curiosities, so he made a 
small scoop net at the end of his butterfly net pole and 
succeeded in landing the nest and two out of four of 
the eggs. 

A well-known naturalist once told me that it seemed 

189 



OUR PRICELESS SWALLOWS 

to him that the swift in flight used its wings alternately. 
It would be an interesting bit of sport and scientific 
research combined to secure a series of flight pictures 
of the swift and try to find this out. I have thought 
that sometimes I would squat on the ridge pole by some 
favorably located chimney to which swifts resorted 
and see if I could get some pictures. Who else will 
try it? 



190 



CHAPTER XII 

FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

{Tanagers, Waxwings, Shrikes, Vireos) 

NED came in one day in May, when the migration 
was at its height, and reported that he had seen 
a flock of male Scarlet Tanagers, six of them 
together, along a roadside, and asked if it was not a 
rare thing to find so many at once. I told him that it 
was rather unusual, but that I had occasionally seen 
such an occurrence at this time of year. They winter 
in Central and South America, and the males start first 
for the North, as is the case with many other birds, 
trusting to the females to come along later and help 
in setting up housekeeping. To see so many of these 
black and scarlet birds at once would make one think 
that they were more abundant than they are. But 
most people think it quite an event when they see even 
one. Though they are not rare, they are retiring birds 
and keep mostly to the woods, so the average person 
hardly ever sees them. 

I went on to tell Ned that, if we lived in tropical 
America, the brilliant tanagers would not seem so 
remarkable to us, for there they have great numbers 

191 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

of them. Indeed there are so many kinds that instead 
of telling about tanagers, waxwings, shrikes and vireos 
all in one chapter to even things up, as we are doing 
now, we might have to make a whole book about 
the tanagers alone, for, actually, there are said to be 
three hundred and fifty species of tanager in Central 
and South America, a good many more kinds of birds 
than we are telling about in this whole book. Of all 
these tanagers, only five reach the southern border of 
the United States, and only one, the Scarlet Tanager, 
is found, except as a straggler, in our northeastern 
districts. 

The four bird families named in the heading of this 
chapter follow each other in this order in the classifica- 
tion, except that we have taken out the swallows to 
treat by themselves — yet it is curious and remarkable 
how diverse these neighbors are. Not only are they 
entirely distinct in form, habits and coloration, but, 
taken as families, there are other interesting points of 
difference. For instance, the tanagers, as we have 
said, are a tremendously large group and are confined 
to the Western Hemisphere; but of the waxwings, 
which are American also, there are only two known 
species that certainly belong to this group. The 
shrikes, on the other hand, belong largely to the Eastern 
Hemisphere, for out of two hundred kinds America 
can boast of but two. The vireos are peculiarly 
American, and there are fifty species, but of these we 
only see six in northern and eastern North America. 

192 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

The female Scarlet Tanager is not a scarlet tanager 
at all, but a dull greenish-olive one, and very few people 
would suspect her relationship to her brilliant husband. 
Indeed, she generally comes into publicity, if at all, as 
it were in his reflected light. First we see the male, 
about the most conspicuous object in the woodland 
landscape, and then, looking about very sharply for 
his companion, we finally make out her demure and 
inconspicuous form among the foliage. It is well that 
she is not as conspicuous as her husband, for every 
marauder would discover the nest, and presently there 
might be no more Scarlet Tanagers. 

The nest is generally built in the woods out toward 
the end of some horizontal branch, often in an oak, and 
as high as twenty feet from the ground. But I have 
also found them in saplings no higher than one's head, 
in pastures close to the edge of the woods, in wild 
apple trees or abandoned orchards grown to scrub. 
In one spot of this latter sort I recently found three old 
nests, in early June, and saw the pair of tanagers 
loitering about, but could not trace them to their new 
home. 

There is another decadent orchard spot near my 
home, on a hillside, by the edge of woods, all grown up 
to briers and scrub. The season before the one just 
mentioned, on the twenty-fifth of May, I noted a new 
but uncompleted nest on an extending branch of an 
apple tree. No bird was about, and I was uncertain 
to what species it belonged — either Rose-breasted 

193 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

Grosbeak or Purple Finch I thought it would prove to 
be. On June first the nest held four eggs, which looked 
like tanagers', but there was no bird in sight. Next 
time, however, the female tanager was on the nest. 
It was not favorably situated to photograph, but I 
thought I would pose the young later, when they were 
of the right age. But young land birds grow surpris- 
ingly fast and I must have waited just a little too long, 
for in a Wood Thrush's nest near by, in which the eggs 
were laid at about the same time, the young were ready 
to leave, and the tanagers' nest was empty. But I 
photographed a nest with eggs on a sapling in the woods 
and so have at least that much to show. Once I came 
near getting a good snapshot picture of a male on a 
wire fence with my reflecting camera. I crept up quite 
near, but the bird started to fly just as I snapped, so 
the picture was not very good. 

Of the two species of waxwings, the Bohemian Wax- 
wing is a very rare winter visitor from the far North, 
and I have never seen it alive. The other, the Cedar- 
bird, is a common and familiar bird, much admired 
for its soft brown plumage, its wavy crest, the yellow- 
bordered tail, and the little red "sealing wax" feather 
tips that some of them have on their wings. Most of 
the year they go in compact flocks, making a lisping 
note as they fly, and alighting close together on the 
trees. These flocks sometimes appear in the winter, 
and one of my earliest recollections about birds is that 
one bitter cold day in February a large flock of these 

194 




Nest of Scarlet Tanager. "On a sapling in the woods" (p. 194). 




Young Cedar Waxwings. "Assumed pretty positions" (p. 196). 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

birds was flying about our garden, and we picked up 
one dead, which we had mounted. How I did admire 
it! — much, I suppose as my baby girl feels, who pats 
the stuffed birds in my study every day, saying, "Chicky, 
chicky." 

In early spring, usually by March, one begins to see 
more and more flocks. These large companies break 
up soon into smaller ones. But after all the other 
birds have paired and are nesting, still we see flocks of 
Cedar-birds and Goldfinches, our two greatest delin- 
quents. The Cedar-bird is the first of these two to 
yield to the inevitable, and by late June or early July 
we begin to miss them. But if we use our eyes a little 
we can find a nest here and a nest there, preferably in 
an orchard tree, but also in shade trees in gardens or 
along village streets. The pretty mother sits quietly 
on her compact nest of straws and rootlets, incubating 
her four or five spotted eggs, which can be distinguished 
at once from those of any other kind. If we disturb 
her we shall hear the lisping notes which were familiar 
in the spring. One day in midsummer a boy came to 
ask me what sort of a bird it was that had a nest in an 
apple tree by his home and kept saying, "Listen to me, 
listen to me." I told him that I never heard a bird 
say that, so I went with him to see, and found that it 
was a Cedar-bird. 

They sometimes nest in my apple trees, and I find 
nests elsewhere readily enough, but most of them are 
out on slender branches or in deep shade, giving little 

195 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

chance for photography. However, as though to reward 
my forbearance in not cutting down a nest to pose 
in unnatural surroundings, I had an unusual chance 
to photograph a pair of Cedar-birds from life. In 
a neighbor's yard, a nest blew down in a thunder- 
storm, and all but two of the young were drowned 
or otherwise disappeared. A kind lady rescued the 
neglected orphans and fed them till they were fully 
grown and feathered. When I saw them they were at 
liberty in the garden, and were so tame that almost at 
once they would fly upon my head or shoulder and beg 
for food. They were very fond of raspberries, and 
every few minutes they would clamor to be fed — in 
their lisping dialect and by beseeching gestures. Hand- 
ling them did not alarm them in the least, so I focused 
the camera on a small bush, and fed the little fellows 
on the desired branch, when they assumed all sorts of 
pretty positions as I snapped them. After a few days 
they wandered off, and one afternoon a lady who 
stepped out on the sidewalk in front of her house was 
amazed to have a Cedar-bird suddenly alight on her 
head and then hop to her shoulder, where she could see 
that it was begging for food. She fed it, and the other 
one appeared, and they stayed about her home all 
day. It is not good, though, for birds to be too con- 
fiding, for a cat caught one of them, and it is more 
than likely that the other perished before long in some 
such way. 

Very different in temperament from the gentle wax- 

196 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

wing is the carnivorous shrike. Of the two species, 
the bold Northern Shrike, or Butcher-bird, is the one 
with which I am the more familiar. We only have it 
in winter, from November to about early April. Most 
often it appears to our view as a solitary, gray-colored 
bird, nearly as large as a Robin, perched up on the 
topmost twig of some isolated tree, in a field or by 
the roadside. While we watch, it may suddenly dive 
down into the bushes or grass below, perhaps returning 
to its perch without result, or it may be with a mouse 
or a poor Tree Sparrow or Junco, grasped by the neck 
by the strong, toothed beak. If hungry, it will proceed 
to devour the victim like a little hawk. But at times 
it seems to kill merely from habit, and will impale its 
slaughtered victim on a thorn in the thicket, or suspend 
it in a crotch, and leave it. It is doubtful if this is 
done to provide for the future. Surely, in cold winter 
weather, when the meat would freeze solid, the shrike 
could hardly be supposed to eat it. Sometimes, when 
one of these birds of murderous taste locates in a town 
and practices its talents on English Sparrows, we come 
to feel friendly toward it. 

I remember how surprised I was the first time I 
heard the Butcher-bird sing. It was in March, and on 
the topmost twig of a small elm on the edge of a field 
stood a bird which at once I called a shrike. As I 
drew near I was greatly surprised to hear it warbling 
away very prettily. At that time I had not read that 
butchering and musicianship could unite in an indi- 

197 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

vidual. I should about as soon have expected a hawk 
to rival the pet Canary. However, I saw that it was a 
Butcher-bird without doubt, so that day I added to my 
little stock of bird-lore. 

The Butcher-bird nests far to the north, but the 
other species, the Loggerhead Shrike, is more southerly, 
and is quite widespread, though rare in the northeastern 
States. I have found its nest in Florida and seen it a 
few times as far west as North Dakota. In habits it is 
a good deal like the Butcher-bird, though more of the 
sort of singer that one would expect a butcher to be. I 
have noticed that it seems to like pretty well to perch 
on telegraph wires. 

Somewhat resembling the shrikes in structure, hav- 
ing in common with them the strong, notched bill, 
the vireos are yet a very different group of birds. 
They are birds of the foliage, clad in dull green and 
olive garb which renders them inconspicuous, great 
destroyers of insects, and of considerable ability in 
song. They all build neat cup-shaped nests which 
they hang in a slender fork, usually near the end of a 
bough. Of the six species that visit us, the first to 
come in spring, toward the latter part of April, is the 
Blue-headed or Solitary Vireo. These species are all 
pretty much of a size and quite similar in plumage, 
and we must look carefully to distinguish them. This 
one is particularly distinct with the bold white ring 
around the eyes, bluish-gray crown and sides of head, 
and short, stubby bill. It is a northerly species, but it 

198 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

sometimes nests as far south as southern New England 
and in the Alleghany Mountains. 

I have been fortunate enough to find one nest. As 
I was passing along the edge of a pine grove one June 
seventeenth, I noticed a vireo 's nest in the fork of an 
extended branch of a sapling, not quite as high as my 
head. The owner, a Solitary Vireo, was at home, and 
was surprisingly tame. Though I stood close to her, 
she did not move, and it was only when I almost put my 
hand on her that she hopped off and began to scold 
very angrily. There were four small young in the nest. 
Unfortunately this was before the days of bird photog- 
raphy, in my boyhood, when the portrait photographer 
fixed one's head in a vise and made one sit rigid for a 
fearfully long time. I am certain that the vireo would 
not have submitted to that. 

Last summer I came pretty near finding another nest 
of this bird. A friend and I had been exploring a 
typical Northern sphagnum swamp, around which grew 
a tract of black spruce, making ideal conditions for 
tempting Northern birds to linger south of their usual 
range. It was getting toward evening, and we were 
just coming out of the woods when we heard a vireo 
singing away with all its might from a pine tree near by. 
"That song doesn't sound to me just like the common 
Red-eye," said my friend. "It certainly does sound a 
little peculiar," I replied, "let's look it up." The pine 
was a large one, and for a quarter of an hour we vainly 
craned our necks, while the bird sang on. Finally my 

199 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

friend threw a stone at random and almost hit the 
singer, which darted out over my head and went down 
into the swamp. Presently it began again to sing and 
we followed it up. For some time it kept itself con- 
cealed in the top of another tall pine, but at last it flew 
down low and gave us a fine view. It was a Blue- 
headed Vireo. This was in late June and of course the 
nest was somewhere near by. We made a long, careful 
search for it, but at last had to give it up and return for 
supper. It proved impossible for me to visit the spot 
again. 

Another species that is easy to distinguish is the 
Yellow-throated Vireo. Its bright-yellow throat re- 
veals its identity in a moment. Though found in 
woodland, it is quite partial to the shaded street or 
garden, where it finds delight and food in the tall shade 
trees, from which it sings away blithely all the day. 
One of my earliest recollections is of a beautiful nest 
of this species in our garden in Boston, ornamented 
with many bits of white paper and cotton and lined 
with beautiful soft plant down. More latterly a pair 
built at the extremity of a slender limb of an ash tree 
quite near a window of my present home. 

The Warbling Vireo is another species which fre- 
quents the tall shade trees of town or village, or even 
city. It is a plainly-garbed little bird, perhaps the 
most demure of all the vireos, greenish above and 
yellowish white below, without distinct markings. 
The nest is nearly always inaccessible, and were it not 

200 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

for its voluble singing, it would seem much scarcer than 
it really is. There is another vireo which is quite like 
it, a rare migrant, the Philadelphia Vireo, which may 
be distinguished by uniform pale greenish-yellow color 
of its entire under-parts. 

The remaining other two kinds are named after the 
color of their eyes, or iris — White-eyed and Red-eyed 
Vireo. The former has a ring of yellowish feathers 
around the eyes, and is a bird of the swampy thicket, 
a hard bird to study, as its haunts are so impenetrable. 
However, I have managed to find its nest, suspended 
in a low bush in the dense tangle of a swamp, though 
were it not for the fact that the little fellow is such a 
capital singer and mimic, the most accomplished 
vocally of all our vireos, even the bird lover might not 
suspect its presence. Even as it is, with all its fine 
singing, few people know of its existence. 

If there is any vireo at all well-known, it is the Red- 
eyed Vireo, or "Preacher-bird," as some have called it, 
readily distinguishable by white stripe over the eye. 
It is one of our most abundant woodland birds, and is 
also often found in shade trees or orchards. No bird's 
nest is more often found in the woods than the Red- 
eye's. One winter day, while taking a walk in the 
woods with Ned and another boy, I noticed a number 
of these nests on the bare branches. "Boys," said I, 
"stop a moment and tell me how many vireos' nests 
you can discover right from where you stand." The 
boys began to peer about, and after some little time 

201 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

they made out to find the six which I had already noted. 
In late spring and pretty much throughout the summer 
it seems as though one could hardly go anywhere into 
woodland without hearing the simple monotonous carol 
of the Red-eye "preacher." If no one listens to his 
discourse, it makes no difference, for his "preaching" is 
only intended for home consumption, the expression to 
his mate of his affection and of their mutual happiness. 

The nest is generally in the fork of a sapling, low 
down, often within four feet of the ground. The 
mother bird sits tamely upon her three or four white, 
sparsely-dotted eggs. I have found it easy to stand 
the camera near by and photograph her, though she 
snuggles down so deeply into the cup that little of her 
can be seen save her head and the top of her back. 

Of all the many Red-eyes' nests which I have seen, 
none have proved as interesting as one which I found 
this last June. I was just coming out of the woods 
back from the shore of a pond, when one of these vireos, 
flying into the shrubbery, suddenly encountered me 
face to face. At once it began to scold, and I saw the 
nest on a low sprout, just to one side. It was newly 
finished and contained only one egg, not the vireo's, 
but of the Cowbird parasite. To help the vireo, I 
removed it, thinking that now the birds might raise 
their brood in peace. I kept the nest in mind, and, 
wishing to photograph young vireos, I returned to it 
twenty-three days later, at the time when the brood 
ought to be nearly fledged. As I peered into the nest 

202 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

I saw that there were young, but imagine my surprise 
when these young proved to be, not vireos, but two 
lusty young Cowbirds, about ready to fly. There is 
no way of knowing whether one Cowbird had laid 
three times in this nest, or whether it was the work of 
three different Cowbirds. No doubt these youngsters 
had thrown out or trampled to death the whole brood of 
young vireos. I had a good mind to wring their necks, 
but the foster mother came and acted so distressed, that 
I decided she had had trouble enough. 

But anyhow I was going to photograph the young 
rascals. It was dark there in the woods, so I carried 
them some rods out into an open clearing, where I 
posed them on a branch and used up my last few 
plates. By this time the old vireo had found us and 
scolded plaintively from a branch close by. Then it 
began to dawn upon me that I had been rash in using 
up my plates so soon. I withdrew a few yards, leaving 
the camera where it was, close to the young. Within 
a minute the vireo flew down and gave one of her 
adopted children a worm, utterly ignoring the camera. 
I do not know when I ever felt more utterly disgusted 
at myself for having made such a blunder. Oh, if I 
only had a few plates! My reflecting camera was in 
the buggy half a mile away and the sun nearly setting ! 
Putting the young Cowbirds in the carrying case, to 
keep them from fluttering away in my absence, I ran 
as fast as I could, got the other camera and plates, 
and rushed back again. I put the youngsters on the 

203 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

branch and sat down near by with the big camera, ready 
for business. The vireo, to my delight, went right to 
feeding the clamorous Cowbirds and I scored half-a- 
dozen shots before the western hill cut off the yellow 
sunshine. I put the youngsters back in the nest, hoping 
against hope that they would not be gone on the mor- 
row, for I knew that these pictures already taken must 
be under-exposed, as they proved to be. 

All in a flutter of excitement, the next morning, I 
peered through the foliage as I neared the nest. "Oh, 
joy, they are there!" I exclaimed. I thought surely I 
was all right now, but my troubles were to begin. I 
posed the young, but they were determined not to stay 
on the branch, and I had to replace them again and 
again — scores of times. Besides this, the mother did 
not show up. After waiting over an hour, I feared all 
sorts of things, as she had not appeared at the nest 
while I was removing the young. Finally, just as I 
was thinking of returning them to the nest, I heard the 
old bird, and presently she came and gave one a worm. 
But now it had clouded up darkly and threatened rain, 
being too dark to photograph. I sat there another hour 
or more and watched her tuck grubs, flies, raspberries 
and the like into the hungry mouths. There was the 
camera staring helplessly at all those splendid poses 
two or three feet away, and I fairly gnashing my teeth, 
my proverbial patience almost a complete wreck. 

But at length the clouds began to break. The sun 
peered out, and I scored a shot as a big red raspberry 

204 




Red-eyed Vireo feeding young Cowbird. "Save one a worm" (p. 204). 




Red-eyed Vireo feeding Cowbirds. 'A big red raspberry 
. . . mouth" (pp. 204-5). 



. shoved into 



FOUR NEIGHBORS DIVERSE 

was being shoved into a widely opened mouth. Pres- 
ently another gleam, just in time to catch on the plate 
the offer of a great fat worm. For about an hour there 
were intervals of sunshine, during which feeding was 
in active operation, and shooting, too! I fired away 
with that camera till it was, metaphorically, red-hot 
and when the dark leaden pall shut in again over the 
sky before the shower broke, I went away rejoicing, 
leaving the devoted and deluded vireo still cramming 
the insatiable maws of those murderers of her own 
offspring. 



205 



CHAPTER XIII 

FEATHERED GEMS 

(The Warblers) 

TALKING about a day in June being "rare" 
always makes me feel like standing up for May. 
Really I should like to know whether any day 
in June can surpass a real "warbler day" in May — 
when the fruit trees are white and pink with their 
canopies of blossoms, when the tints of the young 
foliage are so exquisite, when the air is soft but not hot, 
and when trees and shrubbery in woods, swamp, 
garden, orchard and village streets are fairly alive with 
variegated warblers, flashing about in their greens, 
blues, reds and yellows. Yesterday we noticed none, 
but to-day, this thirteenth of May — lucky day it is 
indeed — we can hardly look at an apple tree without 
having our eyes arrested by movements which are not 
those of blossoms swayed by the wind. As though the 
wedding garb of this bridal tree were not rich enough 
to express the springtime joy, she must be further 
decked with feathered gems, the crowning jewelry of 
Nature. It is indeed a joy to live and move and have 
one's being at such a time — outdoors, of course, for it 

206 



FEATHERED GEMS 

were a sin to stay under a roof and behind glass on one 
of these rare May warbler days. 

No sooner had I set foot even upon the piazza than 
my eye caught the flash as of rubies, and there, in the 
larch tree on the front lawn were a little company of 
half a dozen Bay-breasts, the first I had seen in several 
years. In the clump of honeysuckle bushes was a 
flashy Magnolia Warbler busily looking for his break- 
fast. From the Norway spruces bordering the street 
I heard a snatch of unfamiliar song, and there was the 
first and only Cape May Warbler I had ever met, a 
beautiful adult male, whose distinguishing mark was 
the tan — I almost said sun-burn — of his cheeks. The 
shade trees rang with the joyous notes of the Redstart, 
that flame of a bird — and for that matter with a perfect 
babel of other bird-notes and songs, of Robins, Orioles, 
Vireos, Purple Finches, Grosbeaks, Wrens, Grackles, 
and others. The orchard was a place of delight. 
Parula Warblers, with their bright hues of blue and 
yellows were fluttering before the blossoms; Myrtle 
Warblers were making sallies for flies from the bower 
of petals; Black-throated Greens, more leisurely in 
motions, were droning out their soporific little ditty. 
To make more brilliant the occasion, the common but 
conspicuous Yellow Warbler had loaned us his charms, 
as had also the spectacular and rarer Blackburnian. 

It was fortunate for Ned that he did not have to 
attend school that day, so we started off to see how 
many kinds of warblers we could note for the day's 

207 



FEATHERED GEMS 

list. Most of the morning we spent in the woods well 
up the slope of a range of hills on the west side of the 
river. Warblers of one sort or another were within 
sight or hearing all the time. Of course the Oven- 
birds were calling for "teacher" as volubly as usual. 
The familiar Black and White Creeper was perambulat- 
ing the tree trunks and larger branches, singing his 
simple little trill. One of them stopped for a moment 
on a branch close beside us to see what we were up to, 
and I just had time to snap him with my "Reflex" 
before he started off on his travels. Blackburnians 
and Bay-breasts were unusually common. In one spot 
several of both of these were searching for food, in 
some low undergrowth. I sat down upon a rock near 
by, keeping perfectly quiet, and presently the pretty 
little things were close around me, occasionally even 
within arm's reach, and I secured some snapshots of 
both species, though the May sun was rather fickle, 
dodging in and out behind the broken cloud masses 
that had begun to rise. There was considerable moun- 
tain laurel undergrowth, and the male Black-throated 
Blues were there in full song, and thus conspicuous, 
whereas it took careful searching to find their silent 
and somber-hued little brides, some of whom were 
already, doubtless, choosing nesting-sites, for they build 
rather early and are common here with us. Redstarts, 
Myrtles, and Black-throated Greens were also numerous 
in the woods. 

Coming down and out, we ate our lunch upon the 

208 




Black and White Creeping Warbler. ''Just had time to snap him" (p. 208). 




Black and White Creeping Warbler on nest. "By throwing rays of light upon 

her" (p. 227). 



FEATHERED GEMS 

beautiful river bank, and then followed the "river 
road," with its variety of over-arching trees and fringe 
of swampy thickets. It is usually a fine place for birds, 
and to-day it fairly outdid itself. We had gone but a 
little way when there was a flash of yellow in the road- 
side thicket and here was the Canadian Warbler, with 
the necklace of black beady spots hung across his yellow 
breast, the brilliancy of which was enhanced by the 
more somber grayish back. This one was but the first 
of many, for we kept meeting them every few minutes. 
And now came an even yellower, though smaller, ap- 
parition, a Wilson's Warbler, or Wilson's Black-cap, 
skipping blithely about in a clump of bushes, quaint in 
his shiny black little feather cap. In the thickets along 
the river bank were any number of Northern Yellow- 
throats, and their "witchery- witchery" songs stood out 
above the general chorus. In the same haunts we spied 
out an occasional Water "Thrush," or Wagtail, near 
relative of the Oven-bird, but darker of back and even 
more heavily streaked on the breast. They were 
walking sedately through the debris of the swamp, 
teetering their bodies from time to time. Of course 
the familiar Chestnut-sided Warblers, they that disport 
the brown side-stripes, were abundant all along the 
road, as were Redstarts, Parulas, Yellow Warblers, 
Black-throated Greens and Myrtles. Up from the 
road, in a patch of chestnut scrub part way up the 
hillside, we heard the versatile Yellow-breasted Chat 
pouring forth his medley, and presently saw him 

209 



FEATHERED GEMS 

perched on a sun-bathed limb, warbling away. Further 
along, a mountain brook, which flowed through a dark, 
rocky hemlock-shaded ravine, crossed the road, and 
here, by the little bridge, we saw a Louisiana Water 
Thrush, distinguishable from the other species by the 
throat being pure white, instead of streaked. It is a 
bird of very similar habit, though southern New Eng- 
land is about its northern breeding-range, whereas the 
other goes further north. Out more in the open, in a 
willow, I detected the rather inconspicuous Nashville 
Warbler, a tiny fellow who has some reddish hair — 
or feathers — on the top of his head. 

This made twenty kinds of warblers seen in one day, 
and we thought we had done pretty well. I wanted to 
follow up this fine flight on the morrow and perhaps 
find some more of the varieties. In good season, 
therefore, I was out and at it, but, strange to say, I 
could find but very few warblers, save the resident 
kinds. The host, having fed bountifully that nice day, 
under the impulse of that strange, restless longing for 
the spruce and balsam forests of the North, had started 
on during the night, and by this time were very many 
miles away. But it was a good season for warblers, 
and before it closed we both had seen more kinds than 
we had ever met before in a season, including some 
which, like the Cape May, were entire strangers. What 
a delight it is, after one has studied birds for decades 
and thinks he has met about every species around home 
which he is likely ever to meet, and that he knows them 

210 



FEATHERED GEMS 

all, suddenly to encounter one which he has never in his 
life seen alive. 

Such an event occurred this same season one day 
toward evening. It was about twenty minutes before 
supper time. I had already been afield that day, and 
my first impulse was to play on the piano. But some- 
thing moved me to stroll out back of the village street 
and look for bird-migrants. On the edge of a cemetery 
is a narrow strip of woodland bordering a meadow, 
growing on a rather steep bank. Hardly had I looked 
over the edge when I saw a warbler in some low shrub- 
bery, half way down the slope. Just as I raised my 
field-glass it flew, but in that instant I thought I saw 
bold stripes on the head. Instantly Audubon's picture 
of the Worm-eating Warbler flashed into my mind. I 
am fortunate enough to own a set of Audubon and it 
was probably that which started me out as a child with 
a passion for birds. Though confident that I had just 
seen my first "Worm-eater," I must have a better view 
to be sure. So I followed after it along the strip of 
trees and shrubbery, hoping that I might start it again. 
About a hundred yards further on a bird flew from the 
ground which I thought was the one. It kept flitting 
on and on, after brief stops among the patches of fern, 
until I was about in despair of getting a good look at it. 
Finally it seemed to stay in one spot and I stole up 
with caution. Peering through the bushes, I was 
thrilled and delighted to see it sitting motionless on a 
log, within a very few feet of me, an undoubted Worm- 

211 



FEATHERED GEMS 

eating Warbler, with the bold stripes on its head. With 
my powerful glasses I could see it as well as though it 
were in my hands. There it sat for fully five minutes, 
perhaps about ready for bed. Then I startled it and 
it darted off. As I returned home I also saw its mate. 
I hoped they would breed there, as it was an ideal 
situation for them, but I never could find them after- 
ward. This was the very last of May. 

Another rarity to me that I had met a few days before 
was a male Golden-winged Warbler, splendid with his 
conspicuous yellow wing-bars, feeding in an apple tree 
near my home. Still another was a Tennessee Warbler 
which I encountered during a furious cold rainstorm 
in a pasture. The poor little fellow flew out from 
where he had been sheltering himself under a rock. 
He was bedraggled and shivering, but he flitted to an 
apple tree and set to work hunting for supper among 
the blossoms. In the same pasture I saw a Canadian 
Warbler so benumbed that it could hardly fly, and I 
almost caught it. Other birds were about in the same 
condition, so I was thankful that immediately after 
this the weather cleared. The storm had been on for 
three days, and such bad weather in the migration or 
breeding period is very destructive of bird life. 

There are a few of the warblers which we are liable 
to meet which I have not mentioned. Such is the 
Yellow Palm Warbler, a common and early species, 
quite flycatcher-like in habits, which comes to us about 
mid-April. On the warbler day described above we 

212 



FEATHERED GEMS 

did not see any, and probably they had mostly migrated 
beyond us. The last of all the tribe to appear is the 
Black-poll Warbler. It looks a little like the Black 
and White Warbler, but is different enough, and has 
none of the "creeper" habits, keeping in the foliage 
pretty well up and droning out a lisping little ditty. 
We usually have it lingering till the last of May or the 
first of June, and in the tardy season of 1907 it remained 
at least till June 12th. Both the Mourning and Con- 
necticut Warblers are rare; they are found, like their 
nearest "Swamp- Warbler" relatives — as certain scien- 
tists have classed them — mostly on or near the ground, 
and they are easily confused, as both are much alike, 
with dark ashy throat-patch. A careful reading of the 
descriptions in the Manuals is advisable to fix in mind 
their points of difference. Then there is the Pine 
Warbler, the bird with dull, plain yellow breast which 
runs creeper-like over the trunks and branches of pines, 
especially the yellow or pitch pine, in regions of poor 
and sandy soil. With it we may think of the Prairie 
Warbler, which is likewise locally distributed, in scrubby 
and bushy tracts, an inconspicuous little fellow, and, in 
my experience, rather hard to find, unless one is in a 
region that they have chosen as a center of abundance. 
Even less conspicuous is the Blue-winged Warbler, 
which somewhat resembles the Yellow Warbler, but has 
grayish or ashy wings. It is fond of the edge of woods, 
and usually is far from common. Where I live they 
are more apt to be seen in August, after the breeding 

213 



FEATHERED GEMS 

season. The Hooded and Kentucky Warblers are 
rather common in parts of the Middle States, and there 
are several rare or accidental species which one might 
possibly meet, such as the Prothonotary, Brewster's 
(probably a hybrid), Cserulean and Yellow -throated 
Warblers. 

This makes about thirty-five species of this remark- 
able family which we may meet in the Eastern and 
Middle States. About twice that number are known 
to occur in the entire United States, and there are some 
thirty more tropical species, making about one hundred 
known species of Wood Warblers, a group which is 
peculiar to the Western Hemisphere. Thus the group 
is second with us in number of species to the puzzling 
finch family, and it has almost as many puzzles for 
the beginner in bird-study. The task is easiest in 
spring, when all of them are in their bright and distinc- 
tive nuptial dress. But by autumn they have become 
more or less dull-colored and nondescript, especially 
the young, some of which latter can hardly be identified 
without shooting — such as young Black-polls and young 
Bay-breasts. 

Most of the warblers are slender, active little birds, 
living mostly in dry or swampy woodland, where from 
the foliage they glean their living of insects, grubs and 
larvse. They cannot endure much cold, so most of 
them migrate in autumn to the tropics. A few kinds 
winter in our Southern States, but only one, the Myrtle 
Warbler, recognizable by its yellow rump-patch, ever 

214 " 



FEATHERED GEMS 

stays to brave the snow and cold of our Northern win- 
ters. They are mostly among the last of our migrants 
to return to us in spring, May being the great flight 
time, though we begin to have a few in April, such as 
the Myrtle, Yellow Palm, Pine, and Black-throated 
Green. 

One nice thing in studying warblers is that in migra- 
tion they come to our very doors, fairly forcing them- 
selves upon our attention. At such times, careless of 
their accustomed haunts, they pour, as it were, across 
the country like a tidal wave. Wherever there is a tree 
with young leaves or blossoms, we are liable to find 
warblers at such times, even on city streets. They 
pour into city parks, and such a place as Central Park, 
New York City, is one of the very best warbler grounds, 
for they are fairly congested in such green spots amid 
weary miles of pavement, which are, for them, truly 
oases in the desert. So everyone who will may study 
the beautiful warblers right at home, and, with opera 
glass to see them and text-book to identify them, learn 
and enjoy much. 

A disadvantage and disappointment, to the contrary, 
is that the abundance of the migration, as we see it, 
varies very much from year to year. Some years, as 
we have been showing, warblers are everywhere. But 
then again we shall hardly find them at all. In these 
years, for some reason, the hosts either take another 
route in their travels or else pass over us at night, and 
we look in vain for their welcome presence on the 

215 



FEATHERED GEMS 

blossom-laden fruit trees. Investigations to learn the 
reason for this are on foot, but as yet it is largely a 
mystery. 

The autumnal migration is by no means a repetition 
of the delightful experiences of the spring. Silently and 
almost stealthily the warblers slip past us and are gone 
ere we realize that they have been with us at all, unless 
we look carefully for them. No longer do their exuber- 
ant spirits reveal themselves in snatches of character- 
istic song. The pretty nuptial garb is exchanged for 
the traveler's costume, as though they were expecting 
to rough it on the long journey amid increasing cold. 
Nor do they come so much at this season into the gar- 
dens and orchards, but keep more to woods and thickets. 
They are shier, too, and in every way harder to identify. 
Yet we love them for what they were, and what they 
will be next spring again. Small bands of them begin 
to appear in August, and during September the bulk 
of them pass. By early October most of them have 
gone. 

We should expect from the name "warbler" that 
these birds were great singers, whereas they are not. 
Each species in spring has some characteristic, short, 
simple phrase, or phrases, of song, more or less varied, 
consisting of several rather weak notes, seldom as many 
as a dozen. Some of these songs resemble those of 
other species, while others are quite distinctive. But 
it is possible for any person of quick ear who will care- 
fully observe these songs to become able to recognize 

216 



FEATHERED GEMS 

the warblers by their notes. This is a great advantage 
in field work, and, for that matter, to know all bird- 
notes as far as possible. It will save one a great deal of 
needless searching and instantly call one's attention 
to the presence of rare species which otherwise would 
probably be overlooked. 

To a great many people there is a special fascination 
connected with the nesting of the warblers, just as there 
is in finding the various species on their spring migra- 
tion. Their little houses are so dainty, and ordinarily 
so well concealed and hard to find, that the discovery 
of a warbler's nest is a distinctly interesting and en- 
livening event. Most of them nest well to the north. 
Only about seven kinds breed at all commonly in most 
Middle-Eastern districts — namely, the Yellow, Chest- 
nut-sided and Black-throated Green Warblers, Oven- 
bird, the Northern Yellow-throat, Redstart, and Black 
and White Creeper or Warbler. A few more breed 
sparingly or locally — such as the Chat, Kentucky, 
Hooded, Blue-winged Yellow and Worm-eating War- 
blers, especially in the Middle States; and casually 
there or in the latitude of southern New England the 
Nashville, Golden-winged, Parula, Black-throated Blue, 
Pine and Canadian Warblers and the Louisiana Water 
Thrush. Out of about sixteen kinds which at all 
normally breed in the regions where I have lived — 
Massachusetts and northern Connecticut — I have found 
the nests of twelve. The number grows very slowly, 
and only by persistent and assiduous searching. But 

217 



FEATHERED GEMS 

it is one of the beauties of this delightful "Sport of Bird 
Study" that the unexpected is always liable to happen. 

It was thus unexpectedly that I happened upon my 
only nest of the Nashville Warbler. Ned and I were 
going up into some woods where a pair each of Broad- 
winged and Cooper's Hawks nested, on the fifteenth 
of May. We were following an old cart-road bordering 
a field and the woods on a side-hill. On the side toward 
the field was a low grassy bank, about three feet high. 
Just as I passed close to a certain spot, out darted a 
small warbler from the grass of the bank, within arm's 
reach of me, and fluttered over the road, quivering its 
wings. Now, when a warbler quivers Us wings one 
may be very sure that there are either nest or young 
near by, so I was on the alert. The bird then flew up 
into a low tree and began a scolding "chip, chip." 
After identifying it positively as a Nashville, we went 
eagerly to work to look for the nest. But, though we 
examined carefully every inch of the ground, there was 
absolutely no sign of it, except a little hollow amid 
some dry grass. I told Ned that I believed the bird 
had just scratched it out preparatory to beginning to 
build and that we would look again later. 

On the 29th of May we were there once more. No 
bird flew out and no nest could we discover. Just as 
I was wondering if we could not have mistaken the 
spot, Ned's sharp eyes detected a little opening in the 
dry grass, and in underneath was a dainty little cup of 
moss lined with grass, and five tiny white eggs with 

218 




Nest of Black-throated Blue Warbler. "A neat, compactly woven little cup' 

(p. 219). 




Nest of Yellow-breasted Chat, with one runt egg. 

briars" (p. 222). 



"Amid the densest tangle of 



FEATHERED GEMS 

reddish spots. They were cold, so I thought the bird 
would lay another egg, for some warblers occasionally 
lay six. However, I took a photograph of the nest and 
eggs and came back several days later, in a downpour 
of rain — a genuine lover of birds doesn't mind such a 
trifling inconvenience, if one is dressed for it. There 
the same five eggs were, cold and wet. I took them 
and the nest home and found that incubation had 
proceeded three or four days before the mother dis- 
appeared. I suspected the Cooper's Hawks of the 
murder of the female, so Ned and I went and robbed 
them of their eggs that there might not be four more of 
them there to eat warblers. It was fortunate that I 
identified the Nashville the first time, or I should never 
have known to what bird the nest belonged and the 
experience would have been without scientific value. 

Another good warbler find I shall have to lay to the 
credit of my wife. Ned and I conducted a party, con- 
sisting of a bird-club of ladies, up a steep road back 
into the hill country where the Black-throated Blue 
Warblers nested quite abundantly in the woods where 
there was an undergrowth of mountain laurel. As two 
of the ladies were following an old wood road, up flitted 
a little olive-colored bird from close beside them, and 
my wife discovered the nest in the fork of a low sassafras 
sprout, about a foot from the ground. It was a neat, 
compactly woven little cup and contained four eggs. 
They called to me and I examined the nest and then 
hid, to try to see the owner. Presently she began to 

219 



FEATHERED GEMS 

hop about chirping, and I saw at once that she was of the 
above species from the rather conspicuous white wing- 
bar, which is very characteristic. The male with his 
dark blue back and black throat is a very distinguished 
citizen, with a lovely little song, but his little wife is 
very plain indeed. This was the tenth of June, and 
the eggs were nearly ready to hatch. 

Another season, on the twelfth of June, after climbing 
to examine the young "robbers of the falls," mentioned 
in the third chapter, Ned and I sat on the rocks below 
the great fall, eating our lunch. Presently I noticed a 
female Louisiana Water Thrush pattering about among 
and over the rocks, teetering as usual. At first I did 
not pay much attention to her, but after she had gone 
off and returned several times, it began to dawn upon 
me that we might be near her nest and that she was 
anxious. So we withdrew, hid behind a bowlder and 
watched. After climbing about for perhaps five minutes 
longer, the bird flew up into a recess of the steep side 
of the ravine, just behind where we had been eating, 
and disappeared. Waiting to make sure that she had 
settled down, we stole up cautiously, and out she 
popped from a hole in the mossy declivity, close beside 
us. There was the nest with five white, finely speckled 
eggs, built into the recess in the green moss and dry 
leaves which had lodged there. Some of these latter 
stuck up and partly concealed the entrance, which was 
five feet up from the bottom of the ravine. The owner 
was now running about near by, chirping excitedly. 

220 



FEATHERED GEMS 

After photographing the nest with the camera on the 
tripod, I thought I would try for a picture of the old 
bird on the nest. It was rather a hard problem to hide 
the camera properly. The only way seemed to be to 
tie it on the projecting rock on the side of the gully, a 
little above and in front of the nest. At first there seemed 
to be no place to stand to focus, but Ned generously 
offered to let me stand on his head with one foot, having 
the other over a rock, grasping a sapling with one hand 
while I adjusted the camera with the other. It was 
hard work and took quite a while, but at last the camera 
was rigged, connected by a thread, and covered with 
dead leaves. From over the brook we watched, till, in 
a quarter of an hour, the bird stole back to the nest, 
when I went around and pulled the thread for timed 
exposure, once to open the shutter, and in ten seconds 
to close it. In this way I exposed four plates suc- 
cessively, securing one picture only, as in the other 
cases the shutter did not work properly, closing too 
quickly to get an image there in the deep shadow. 
When we came again later to photograph the young, 
we were sorry to find all but one thrown out of the nest, 
with wounds on their bodies, and the other wounded 
so badly that it soon died — crows or jays this time, I 
suspect. 

In the tall dark hemlocks around the falls, the Black- 
throated Green Warblers are abundant, as they are in 
nearly every grove of evergreens. One can hardly 
listen a minute without hearing their dreamy little song 

221 



FEATHERED GEMS 

which well fits in with the murmuring voices of the 
grove. I do not doubt but that I have walked under 
literally thousands of their nests, yet I never have 
found but one, and that was built in a pine grove near 
a Sharp-shinned Hawks' nest, and was deserted before 
the eggs were laid, the warblers, probably, being killed 
by the hawks. The nests are built out on the branches, 
usually high up, where they cannot be seen from the 
ground, and hence they are very hard to find, among 
so many thick trees. Speaking of the destruction of 
these various birds or their nests, according to my 
experience a considerable portion of the birds fail to 
rear their young owing to predatory vermin or cold 
storms. Indeed, it seems almost remarkable that any 
of the birds survive the many dangers to which they 
are exposed, and the very least we can do, in order 
that they may not be exterminated, is not to injure or 
needlessly disturb them ourselves, and, better still, to do 
all that we can for their protection. 

Another warbler that conceals its nest in a different 
way is the Chat. It builds a rather bulky structure 
amid the densest tangle of briers, entirely hidden from 
sight. It was only by struggling through acres and 
miles of brambles, with plenty of scratches and rents 
in clothing, that I have found nests of this retiring bird. 
To hear it sing, imitating other birds and pouring 
forth the loud, striking medley that it does, one would 
expect to find it of a bold, audacious disposition, 
whereas it is just the opposite. So shy is it that I have 

222 




Oven-bird on nest. "Amid the low mountain laurel" (p. 228). 




^tr 



Louisiana Water Thrush on nest. "The bird stole baek to the nest" (p. 221). 



FEATHERED GEMS 

never been able to surprise or photograph one on the 
nest. 

A very singular structure is that of the Parula War- 
bler. All the nests that I have found or known were 
built in the pendent streamers of the gray usnea moss 
which hangs in beards from trees. In the northern 
States this moss is not plentiful, and where it does 
occur the Parula is quite apt to colonize. I have found 
such colonies of a few pairs, or a dozen, in some moss- 
grown swamp, especially in larch or spruce trees. In 
one place there was an old apple orchard with trees all 
overgrown with streamers of this moss, and those 
streamers held a number of sets of eggs. The warbler 
does not appear to build a nest, but rather to scrape 
out a hollow in a swaying beard of moss and lay the 
eggs in this hanging basket. 

I must now tell of the nesting of our common summer 
resident warblers, those whose nests we are most liable 
to come across. The one whose nest is most often 
found is the familiar Yellow Warbler, the kind which 
is practically all yellow, and which is emphatically not 
a wild Canary, though many people call it so. It 
builds a rather bulky, soft nest of plant down and 
fibers on a bush in a swamp, especially, in my experi- 
ence, a willow bush, or near the end of a low branch 
of some small maple or bushy clump in the garden. 
A friend of mine showed me the nest of a pair in a lilac 
bush, right under his bedroom window. A wet bushy 
pasture is also a good place to search, and in such an 



FEATHERED GEMS 

one I recently found two nests with young. I set up 
my camera by one, which was built only four feet from 
the ground, and, after decking the instrument and 
tripod with bushes and lying in wait a few rods off with 
a thread, I was able to make exposures when one or 
other of the parents came with food for the nestlings. 
One of these pictures shows the male tucking a fly into 
a widely opened mouth. 

Another bush-nester is the familiar and interesting 
Chestnut-sided Warbler. This one prefers dry scrub 
land, brier patches, and the like. The nest is less 
ornate than that of the Yellow Warbler and is placed 
habitually lower down, seldom more than waist high, 
whereas the other often builds above one's head. I 
usually find the nest by plunging through the bushes, 
thrashing about at random with a switch. If I happen 
to pass near, the little bird flies out and there is the nest 
concealed from above in the foliage. Chestnut-side is 
a tame, confiding little fellow, an easy bird to photo- 
graph. I have set up the camera close to a nest, con- 
cealing it by drawing bushes around it and trimming 
it with leaves and boughs. After no more than rea- 
sonable hesitation, the pretty warbler hopped back into 
the nest, and, after standing there a moment to take 
in the situation, settled down to incubate. Then I pulled 
the thread and "got" my unhurt quarry. It would fly 
off, and when it returned I took it before it settled 
down. After a few such incidents, it would pay no 
further attention to the click of the shutter, and would 

224 




Redstart on nest. "Their home is pretty and trim" (p. 225). 




Chestnut-sided Warbler on nest. "A tame, confiding little fellow" (p. 224). 



FEATHERED GEMS 

even let me photograph it by hand and change plates 
without stirring. 

One day, as I was driving, a boy stopped me and 
showed me a nest in a strip of hazel bushes by the road- 
side of a pair of Chestnut-sided Warblers. It contained 
the odd combination of a rotten egg, a young warbler 
and a larger young Cowbird. After some trouble I 
photographed the uneasy things, and, having thrown 
out the egg in the hope of making enough room for the 
ill-matched pair, returned two days later to see how 
affairs progressed. It was the old story. The parasite 
had thrown out the rightful offspring, which had dis- 
appeared, leaving the fat, ugly intruder filling the nest 
and clamoring for all the food that both the deluded 
warblers could bring. Probably this is what happens 
in nearly every case in which the Cowbird's egg, laid in 
the nest of another and smaller species, hatches. 

The Redstart is surely one of the most charming of 
our birds. Its song is simple, but how incessantly it 
sings, fairly bubbling over with the joy of life — this 
flame of a brilliant male, whose little flame of a wife 
burns yellow instead of red, and who can make some 
music as well as he. Their home is as pretty and trim 
in its way as are they. It is very firmly woven into 
and around the fork of a sapling or of some up-sloping 
limb, usually from five to twenty feet from the ground, 
so firmly as to seem a part of the tree, and often coming 
through the winter storms perfectly intact, though 
made of rather soft material. While it is not always 

225 



FEATHERED GEMS 

hidden by foliage, it is usually quite hard to discover, 
so well does it harmonize with its surroundings. There 
was a spot in a grove where a pair of Redstarts were in 
evidence all the time, and I was sure there must be a 
nest close by. One evening I watched the female 
hopping uneasily about, and I peered and peeped, 
scanning every limb, without result. The next morn- 
ing I went to the same spot, and the very first thing I 
spied her sitting on her nest five feet up a sapling in a 
crotch, within a few feet of where she had been the 
night before. I set up the camera near the nest, and 
she went right on again with hardly any hesitation. 
The shade was dense, so I got a mirror, threw light on 
her and the nest, and by the thread made a number of 
exposures, both as she sat on her four eggs and as she 
was coming to them. 

Very hard to find are the nests of the ground-building 
Warblers. Indeed if it were not for flushing them by 
chance from their nests, the quest would be almost 
hopeless. The Black and White Warbler is one of 
these. Withal that it is so common in the woods, its 
nest is very hard to discover, and I have only found it 
twice, with eggs and with young. In the former case I 
flushed the female by the base of a tree in swampy 
woods. In the other, one June 14th, Ned and I heard 
the female chirping in some dry hemlock woods. We 
hid to watch, and presently saw her run down a trunk 
and disappear in the dry leaves. After a few minutes 
we stole up and surprised her on the nest. She went 

226 




Nest of Chestnut-sided Warbler, illustrating how the young foster Cowbird destroys 
the brood. Nest now contains a Cowbird, a young Warbler and an egg (p. 225) 




The condition of the Chestnut-sided Warbler's nest two days later. The young 
Cowbird has ejected the young Warbler, and fills the nest (p. 225) . 



FEATHERED GEMS 

out almost from under my feet, trembling her wings, 
as she ran stumbling over the ground. The nest was 
a frail affair, built partly under some dead leaves, and 
in it were five tiny, naked young. I withdrew for 
awhile, and, on returning, saw her on the nest. Pro- 
ceeding to set up the camera on the shortened tripod, 
by working very slowly I was able to bring the lens 
within about three feet and focus on the little mother. 
It was quite dark under the hemlocks, but fortunately 
I carried a small pocket mirror for such purpose, and 
by throwing rays of light upon her was able to secure 
some good pictures, as she kept very still. To reward 
her I withdrew without flushing her from her babies. 
The Oven-bird, which is so abundant in the w T oods, 
builds its nest on the ground under dead leaves which 
are arched over it so as to make the entrance in the 
side, as in an old-fashioned oven — whence the bird's 
name. I have been especially fortunate in stumbling 
across these nests, I suppose because I have been a 
good deal in the woods and kept industriously in mo- 
tion. One day I found two nests by flushing the birds 
when I had almost stepped on them. It was mid 
June and the eggs looked fresh. This species, and 
most of the warblers in this latitude, have eggs, ordi- 
narily, by the first of June, or the last week in May, 
but in 1907 most of them delayed till toward the middle 
of June, which is very unusual. As it was toward 
evening and I had a long drive home, I came again, a 
week later. One of the nests had been robbed by some 

JOT 



FEATHERED GEMS 

varmint, but the other housekeeper was at home and 
allowed me to photograph her there, amid the low 
mountain laurel, as nice as you please. She left the 
nest when I moved the camera very near, but came 
back in a few minutes and then let me work and change 
plates without using the thread, except the first time. 
The other ground-builder is the Northern Yellow- 
throat. It prefers a bushy swamp, with bunches of 
grass, in one of which latter the nest is usually placed. 
Not only by flushing the bird, but also by looking in 
tussocks when the bird began to scold, I have spied 
the nest. It also builds on the ground among thickets 
or in weeds, and on top of a skunk cabbage in a swamp 
it often finds a desirable location for its tenement. 
Such a home I once found with five eggs, and returned 
to it when the young were just ready to fly. Only two 
of them were alive, for the nest had partly tipped over 
and the other three had fallen out and starved or chilled 
within a foot of home, the parents not having had 
intelligence enough to help them back, feed or brood 
them, which they surely could have done. Just as I 
reached the nest the sky had become overcast. The 
two remaining young were determined to escape, but 
I tied them on a log, and, with the camera set close to 
them, the male came again and again and fed them. 
It was simply maddening that the sun would not shine 
out for even one instant. I secured portraits of the 
young by timed exposures, but the few feeding pictures 
that I attempted had hardly a trace of an image on the 

228 




Yellow Warbler feeding young in nest. "The male tucking a fly into a widely- 
opened mouth" (p. 224). 




Northern Yellow-throat. "Depositing the tidbit" (p. 229). 



FEATHERED GEMS 

plates. Next day the sun was bright, but I could not 
find the young, though they were near, as the anxiety 
of the parents proclaimed. 

A year later, on the edge of a thicket by a brook 
flowing through a field, a pair of these birds scolded 
at me, appearing now and then with a worm for the 
young. I hid and watched and made up my mind 
that there were young out in the grass. After a search 
I found one, a fledgling, and then I knew what to do. 
Making a perch, I set him on it before the camera, 
and retired with the end of my spool of thread into the 
bushes out of sight. The male would not venture in 
this case, but the female did, and in the course of two 
hours she gave me sixteen pictures of herself lugging 
some fat worm or depositing the tidbit in the open 
mouth of the little bird. In another case I snapped 
her — though only with head and shoulder on the 
plate — as she was trying to ram down the youngster's 
throat a big harvest-fly that was altogether too large 
for a fit. It stuck fast, and the old bird had to come 
back and ram and shove before the luscious mouthful 
was forced down. It was the best series of feeding 
pictures I had ever secured and I drove home delighted 
with the day's work. 

The American Pipit, or Titlark, is closely related to 
the warblers. These birds appear in flocks as rather 
early spring and late fall migrants, frequenting open 
pastures or barren ground, where they walk about 
jerking their tails. 

229 



CHAPTER XIV 

THRUSH COUSINS 

(Thrashers, Wrens, Titmice, Kinglets, Thrushes, Etc.) 

SUCH a bird as the Brown Thrasher is often popu- 
larly thought of as a kind of thrush, but, though this 
is not strictly correct, it has so much in common 
with the thrushes that we can quite naturally talk of the 
group to which it belongs, and those between it and the 
thrushes in the classification, along with the true thrushes. 
Our thrasher, together with the familiar Catbird and 
the various wrens, are classed in a family called Troglo- 
dytidce, or wren-like birds. This scientific name literally 
means "cave-dwellers," suggesting that they are all birds 
of a sort of under-world, fond of seeking out holes and 
crevices and impenetrable tangles, sly and artful dodgers. 
Though willing enough to show themselves upon occa- 
sion, they seldom get very far from the possible place of 
refuge, into which they can dive upon the slightest alarm. 
Wherever a bird of their size can penetrate, they can do 
likewise with their enchantments, or even go it one better. 
Most people know — or at any rate ought to know — 
the Brown Thrasher, the rather large bird with rich 
reddish-brown back and a long tail, which is so fond 



THRUSH COUSINS 

of dusting itself in the road and which one sees flitting 
into the thickets. It returns from the South about the 
last of April, and when it mounts up on a roadside 
bush or sapling and pours out a flood of song, it is sup- 
posed by farmers, according to the old adage, to be 
calling out, "Plant corn, plant corn." The thrasher 
probably is no farmer, but it arrives and begins to sing 
at about the usual corn-planting season. It is really 
a remarkable songster, one of the most gifted of our 
feathered musicians. Toward the end of May the 
nest with its four or five eggs finely dotted all over with 
brown may be found by the sharp-eyed and persistent 
searcher in a thicket, either on the ground, or, more 
generally, several feet up in the bushes. 

I used to wonder why the bird was called a thrasher. 
But after I had actually received a real thrashing from 
a pair of them, I thought I had some light upon the 
subject. Ordinarily they are quite timid and retiring, 
and, though I had heard of cases where they were very 
bold in defending their nests, in all my experiences I 
had found them as timid as most song birds. But on 
the afternoon of June 18, 1906, toward sundown, I was 
driving homeward along a country road, on one side of 
which was a farmhouse, on the other a bushy pasture. 
Here I saw a Brown Thrasher fly across the road just 
ahead of me, carrying in its bill a large worm. It flew 
down into the pasture and alighted upon the top of a 
dead sprout which projected from a thick clump of 
bushes. After pausing for a moment to look around 



THRUSH COUSINS 

in order to be sure that the coast was clear, down it 
went into the midst of the thicket. 

It was evident that there was a nest somewhere near 
that spot, so I hitched the horse, took my 4x5 camera 
and tripod, and went to investigate. First of all I made 
a careful inspection of the thicket into which the 
thrasher had gone, but could see no sign of a nest. 
Puzzled, I looked it through again, but with the same 
result. Just as I was going off, to look further away, 
I heard a series of sharp hissing sounds, which increased 
in vehemence as I followed up this clue. Even then 
it was some moments before I discovered the author, 
not a snake, but the Brown Thrasher, sitting close on 
a nest which was built into a cavity of the ground under 
the bushes. There the bird remained, though I was 
but a step away, looking up into my face and continuing 
to hiss, braving me and daring me to touch it. 

Of course I withdrew a little and made ready the 
camera on the tripod. But the presentation of that 
blunderbuss was too much for the thrasher's nerves. 
It ran off into the bushes where it was joined by its 
mate, and both of them set up a great outcry. I could 
now see them both at times and discovered that the 
brighter colored one, the male, was the one which had 
been on the nest. No wonder they were angry and 
anxious, for they had five young ones, ragged and un- 
couth in appearance, but lusty and promising, of quite 
good size. 

Opening up the bushes temporarily to let in a little 



THRUSH COUSINS 

light upon this interesting subject, I set the camera 
upon the shortened tripod, decked it with foliage, 
attached a thread, set the shutter for one second ex- 
posure, and retired for awhile. The birds soon stopped 
scolding, so I sneaked up and discovered that the male 
thrasher was upon the nest. So I pulled the thread, 
and was glad to see that the bird sat still. He then 
allowed me to creep up behind the camera, change 
plates, and make exposures by hand, using a long- 
focus, eighteen inch single lens. But w T hen I tried 
to push the camera nearer he beat a retreat. It was 
now getting too dark for further work that day, so I 
put back the bushes in order and went home. 

Owing to trips away and rainy weather, it was not 
till four days later, June 22d, that I was able to resume 
the work, this time with a reflecting camera. Again 
the male was on duty. He slipped off as before, and 
again I opened the bushes, and, very innocently, put 
out my hand to the nest to remove an obstructing leaf. 
I was so surprised and startled that I almost fell over 
backward when instantly the male thrasher dashed 
from the shrubbery behind the nest and struck the 
offending hand a stinging blow. Quickly he withdrew 
again and took his station behind the nest with his five 
big offspring, waiting to see what I would do. As I 
was not looking for a fight, but for the pictures, I 
stepped back a bit and squatted, quietly waiting for 
the brave defender to make the next move. Though it 
was mid-afternoon, the June sun was quite warm, and 



THRUSH COUSINS 

in a very short time the young, though now too old to 
be injured thus, became a bit restless. The devoted 
father noticed this, and came at once to their relief. 
Running out from his shelter, he took his stand over 
them, spreading out wings and tail so as to perfectly 
shield them from the sun. How fine and noble a bird 
he looked as he bravely did his duty, with an air both 
fearless and at the same time resigned to whatever fate 
might befall him. The female was back in the thicket 
exhorting him, I took it, to be brave. But, despite this 
intrusion for the sake of my studies, I came as a friend, 
and would not, nor did not, hurt them. 

With the reflecting camera I then advanced, and, pre- 
senting the instrument as near to him as I pleased, 
snapped and snapped again. Then I wanted a differ- 
ent pose of the brave bird, so I extended my foot toward 
him. Quick as a flash he pounced at my leg, struck it a 
quick, angry blow, and hastened back to the young, this 
time sitting on the nest as though incubating. After 
getting his picture in this position, I decoyed him off 
several times again. After each attack he would either 
return to the nest directly, or go off into the thicket a 
few moments before coming back home to assume 
some new and striking pose. One such was when he 
stood over the young and some of them poked out their 
heads to see for themselves what was going on. Some- 
times, when I made only a slight feint, he would run 
part way to meet me and stand out in the open in a 
defiant attitude, while I snapped him. 

234 



THRUSH COUSINS 

During the course of this fracas the young had one 
by one crawled just outside the nest into the shade 
close by, all but one, which was more puny than the 
rest and could not get out of the rather deep cup. It 
was fortunate for me that this one stayed, for the noble 
parent was as ready to incur danger for one as for all. 
His fine example at length seemed to inspire his rather 
faint-hearted mate, for she began to grow more threaten- 
ing and even ran out in front of the nest, where I 
secured just one snapshot of her standing on a low rock. 

Having now used up quite a number of plates and 
secured pictures of about every possible position, I 
thought I would see what they would do if I actually 
handled the young. So I started to lay hold of the 
chick in the nest. But no sooner had I touched it than 
like a whirlwind, with shrieks of rage and despair, both 
thrashers precipitated themselves upon me. Seizing 
my fingers with their claws, they hung on, scratching 
like vixens, nipping my hand here and there with their 
sharp bills and beating it furiously with their wings. 
Then they darted off into the thicket, and again and 
again I tried to touch the young one, with the same 
result. The whole thing so touched and interested me 
that I felt no injury from their attack, but when I be- 
thought myself to look at my hand I saw that it was 
dotted with little drops of blood, where they had 
scratched or bitten through the skin. Then I wrapped 
a handkerchief around the injured member and let 
them try to tear that for a change. If I stood up and 



THRUSH COUSINS 

put my foot near the nest they attacked that, clinging 
to my pant leg and mauling that to the utmost of their 
ability. 

My only lack was of an assistant to photograph the 
birds in the act of attacking me. It was too late, though 
to secure one that afternoon. The next day I would 
have brought Ned, but the rain poured down unceas- 
ingly, and by the day following the thrashing thrashers 
and their offspring had retired safely from the field 
of the hard fought battle and the glorious victory. No 
doubt they believe that they worsted and routed a man, 
and henceforth and forever thrasher art, folk-song and 
literature will, of course, prate of arms and of the 
man who on that memorable day backward reeled from 
the stubborn birds and a barren field. And, as for the 
man in the case, he no longer doubts the thrasher 
prowess, and enjoys recounting the sensations of the 
thrashing administered by these professional thrashers. 

The melodious thrasher likes the dry thicket and 
patches of bushy scrub, whereas his vocal rival and 
near relative, the Catbird, prefers the swampy thickets, 
or those bordering upon wet ground. Though called 
Catbird from its ordinary scolding, mewing note, the 
bird is a really magnificent singer, with an amazingly 
extensive repertoire. After watching it on some perch 
and hearing it warble away and imitate various birds, 
if we invade its chosen thicket a striking change occurs 
as it turns from singing to scolding, about as radical as 
though at a concert the prima donna should suddenly 

236 




Brown Thrasher (female). "Ran out in front of the nest" (p. 235). 




Male Brown Thrasher, shielding young in nest. "Perfectly shield them from the 

sun" (p. 234). 



THRUSH COUSINS 

begin to swear. However we are not surprised, for we 
know the Catbird to be a great scold. 

One will find the rather bulky nests of this bird almost 
everywhere in the thickets. Some are old and aban- 
doned; the new ones, from the last of May and on, 
will contain four or five very dark blue eggs, and 
later young. When one comes near the bird flies off, 
and then begins to mew and scold at a great rate, yet 
I never heard of one turning "thrasher." For all that, 
though, the average Catbird is bolder then than the 
average Brown Thrasher. At such times I have been 
able to "snapshoot" them with the reflecting camera, 
watching the opportunity when the bird comes out for 
a moment upon some open branch where the sunlight 
strikes it. If we pose the camera near the nest, our 
formerly bold friend becomes very suspicious and it 
is no easy matter to get a photograph. At one time 
when I tried it, I could not for the life of me see the 
old bird on the nest when I crept up. The eggs were 
warm, and I knew she had sneaked off when she heard 
me coming, so I laid the thread away out into the 
pasture and pulled it from afar, after waiting a good 
long time to give her the chance to return. Twice I 
tried it, and in both cases, when I developed the nega- 
tive, I saw that I had caught the sly fox. 

The Mockingbird, celebrated for its song, belongs to 
the same order as Catbird and Thrasher. Though it 
is doubtless the best singer among them, these others 
are not so very far behind. It is a good deal like the 

237 



—— 



THRUSH COUSINS 

Catbird in appearance and in some of its traits. I have 
watched and heard it a good deal in the South, but it 
also comes up sparingly into the Middle States, and I 
have met it as far north as Boston. 

And now for the most wren-like of all the Troglody- 
tidce, for there is nothing so like wrens as the wrens 
themselves. They all look a good deal alike, little 
brown fellows, artful dodgers indeed, that run into 
about every imaginable crevice or cranny, hunting out 
insects and their eggs or larvae, surely a useful tribe. 
Best known of them all, and most beloved, is the House 
Wren. How glad we are in May to hear again the 
merry, bubbling song in the garden and around the 
house, and in due time to see the little people hunting 
for a building-site. Almost any sort of a hole will do, 
in a building, in a tree, a bird-box, an old tin can, or 
any crevice. As soon as they have chosen the place, 
they go right to work to fill it up with twigs, in the 
midst of which they make a soft nest of grass and 
feathers and the like. 

Some of the sites which they select are perfectly 
ridiculous. I have known them to build in the pocket 
of a coat hung up in a shed, and in a hat or pot laid 
on a shelf. The funniest and most audacious thing I 
ever saw a bird do I am almost afraid to tell, lest I 
should injure my reputation for truthfulness. But, 
having a reliable witness, I will venture to tell it. I 
was off on an expedition in the West with Dr. L. B. 
Bishop, of New Haven, Conn., a well-known ornithol- 

238 




Catbird in shrubbery. "When the bird comes out for a moment" (p. 237). 




Catbird on nest. Had caught the sly fox (p. 237). 



THRUSH COUSINS 

ogist. In a grove by our camp he was engaged each 
day for about a week in skinning birds. The guide 
had provided him with an old upholstered chair, the 
lining of which hung down beneath. While the learned 
doctor sat doing up bird specimens in scientific form, 
a House Wren (of the race called Bewick's), fearless of 
being itself consecrated to science, actually went to 
work building its nest in the lining of the chair while the 
doctor was sitting on it, finished the structure, and before 
we moved camp had laid a part of her litter of eggs. 

These wrens seem especially fond of an old tin can 
with a small hole in one end, put up for their benefit, 
and I have known them to set to work building within 
half an hour of the time the can was nailed up. Ned 
nailed one to an apple tree, about five feet up the 
trunk, and the wrens took possession and raised a 
brood. Every few minutes during the day they would 
feed the six hungry young, which gave a fine oppor- 
tunity for photographs. I stood the camera boldly up 
on the tripod near the nest, without any attempt to 
conceal it, and sat a little way off holding the thread 
ready to pull, throwing light upon the can with a mirror. 
When the parent was entering or leaving I would pull 
the string and get a picture. After their young had 
gone, the pair wanted to raise a second brood, in July, 
and began looking around for a new site, as the old 
nest swarmed with bird lice. Ned nailed up another 
can under the eaves of a low shed, and at once the 
wrens went to work building in it. There they raised 

239 



THRUSH COUSINS 

the other brood, which soon became as lousy as the 
first had been. 

If you see a wren in midwinter hopping about a 
brush pile or a stone wall, do not imagine it to be the 
familiar House Wren. It is the kind known as the 
Winter Wren, distinguishable from the other by having 
upper parts of a brighter, reddish brown. It breeds 
mostly well to the north, in the dark spruce forests, but 
Ned and I met two pairs of them in early July in a 
wild, mountainous part of Connecticut, whither we 
had gone to explore for Northern birds. How won- 
derfully these males did sing, a tinkling, bell-like 
warble, that lasted each time I should think as much 
as fifteen seconds, one of the longest bird songs I have 
heard. The larger Carolina Wren is also a famous 
singer. It rarely reaches New England, but appears in 
the Middle States, and more abundantly as we proceed 
southward. 

We have two more wrens, very different in their 
habits from either of the above — the Long-billed Marsh 
Wren and the Short-billed Marsh Wren. These also 
are artful dodgers, but they do their hiding and climb- 
ing amid the reeds or grass of the marsh or meadow. 
Though neither of them are as gifted singers as the 
others, they have pleasing little ditties which add to the 
attractiveness of their wet surroundings. The Long- 
billed kind is generally much the more common and 
conspicuous of the two. One sees them hopping about 
among the reeds or rushes, tails sticking straight up in 

240 




House Wren entering nest. "Another can under the eaves" (p. 239). 




House Wren emerging from nest in old can. 

(p. 239). 



"Ned nailed one to an apple tree' 



THRUSH COUSINS 

jaunty fashion, singing away as every happy little wren 
should. They build a conspicuous globular nest sus- 
pended well up among the reeds or rushes. Entrance 
is by a little round hole in one side. The chamber is 
softly lined with plant down, and rather late in June 
contains from five to nine very dark little eggs of a 
mahogany-brown color. A curious trait of this wren 
is that it builds a number of dummy nests, apparently 
to mislead intruders. One will often examine half a 
dozen nests before the finished and occupied one is 
found. 

The Short-billed Marsh Wren is similar in many of 
its habits, but is even more secretive and mouse-like 
than the other. It keeps more to low, thick meadow 
grass, and builds a nest similar to that of the other, 
but low down in a tussock. The equally numerous 
eggs are, however, pure white. The sitting bird will 
sneak off the nest and be hiding in the grass close by, 
despite all one's efforts to kick it out. I succeeded 
once in getting a photograph of one near its nest in a 
meadow by setting the camera focused on a nearby 
bush on which I saw it several times alight. Standing 
off in the distance, holding the thread connected with 
the shutter, I had a friend chase the little rascal. It 
took short flights from bush to bush, until once it 
alighted just where I wanted it. Often it would get 
just under the bush, and I would walk up and poke at 
it with a switch to try to make it fly up higher. But 
instead it would run like a mouse off into the grass. 

241 



THRUSH COUSINS 

Between the wrens and thrushes come four small 
groups of birds, about which we must say just a few 
words. One is the creeper family, of which we have 
but one species in America, our Brown Creeper, that 
slender little brownish fellow with a rather long bill 
and stiff spiked tail which we see in the colder months 
running up the trunks of trees, uttering faint lisping 
sounds as it does so. It is a timid little creature and 
is pretty hard to locate, even when we are hearing its 
deceptive notes. It usually nests well to the north, 
but sometimes as far south as southern New England, 
and builds behind a loose, rotten sheath of bark on a 
decaying tree. 

Next are the nuthatches, two of which we have — 
White-breasted and Red-breasted Nuthatches. Their 
name was earned by skill in cracking nuts. They are 
the funny little blue-gray fellows that climb about on 
the trees saying, "ank, ank," hanging or feeding head 
down as easily as any other way. The smaller Red- 
breast we have mostly as a migrant to and from the 
North, but now and then it stays in winter. The White- 
breast we have resident with us the year round. In 
winter it becomes very familiar and accepts our hospi- 
tality of nuts, crumbs, or suet. It is not a bit afraid 
of the camera, and many a person, myself for one, have 
photographed it by focusing the camera upon the 
"lunch counter" and pulling the thread when the bird 
seems to be posing just right. Some use a pneumatic 
tube and bulb, but this device cracks and leaks air or 




Short-billed Marsh Wren. "Alighted just where 1 wanted it" (p. 241). 




Nest of Short-billed Marsh Wren. "Builds low down on a tussock" (p. 241). 



THRUSH COUSINS 

fails to move the shutter, and I very much prefer a 
thread. Quite early in spring friend Nutty ignores our 
charity and makes a nest in a hollow limb of some 
shade or orchard tree, where it raises a family of from 
five to eight. 

The sub-family of titmice are now classed with the 
nuthatch sub-family in the family Paridce, or titmice, 
and well so, for they all have much in common in their 
mode of life. 

Our common little Chickadee is enough to make us 
think well of this group. They are so animated and 
interesting that it is a delight to have them about our 
homes in the winter, feeding on the suet. Everyone 
ought to tie or nail up a piece of fat meat for the birds, 
out of reach of cats, and as an investment it pays big 
dividends in the pleasure which their company in the 
long, cold season affords. Like the nuthatch they are 
easy to photograph, and like them they forsake us with 
the passing of the snow, and, betaking themselves to 
the woods and swamps, in May they excavate a tiny 
burrow in a rotten stub, in my experience generally a 
birch, which is very soft. Like the nuthatches also 
they rear large families, and it is remarkable how the 
young birds escape being smothered, for they fill the 
hole about solid full when they are well grown. If we 
take them out it is a real problem how to get them all 
in again. 

Toward the end of winter the Chickadee has a fine 
trick of fooling people by a note which they think is 

243 



THRUSH COUSINS 

made by the Phoebe. It is a long-drawn, plaintive 
whistle — "pee-wee-e," but it is not so very much like 
the Phoebe's note, if one could hear both together. 
Yet the correspondent of the local country paper reports 
the first Phoebe heard — though never seen ! — in January 
or February, and the knowing ones smile. In Canada 
there is also the Hudsonian Chickadee, which wears a 
brown cap instead of a black one, and says "dee-dee" 
instead of "chicka-dee-dee," and in the Middle States 
and southward they have the Tufted Titmouse, which 
has a topknot, and the Carolina Chickadee. 

In still another group, the Sylviidce, or birds of the 
"Old World Warbler" type, we have several dainty 
little midgets, next in size to the hummers, which are 
very interesting. One is the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, 
found in the Middle States and southward. I have had 
no opportunity to know and study it afield, as I have 
the two other species, the Kinglets — Golden-crowned 
and Ruby-crowned. They are both tiny birds, greenish 
olive above and white beneath, with a brilliant crown 
color-patch which the Manuals describe, which, how- 
ever, is lacking in the female and immature Ruby- 
crown. They are spring and fall migrants with us, 
sometimes wintering. How such fragile little mites of 
birds can keep from freezing in cold weather is a 
mystery. They are fond especially of evergreen woods, 
but appear in other timber as well. If in the woods one 
hears repeated faint lisping sounds which are hard to 
locate in the treetops, they probably are made either 

244 




Chickadees. "Feeding on the suet" (p. 243). 




White-breasted Nuthatch. "Accepts our hospitality" (p. 242). 



THRUSH COUSINS 

by the Brown Creeper while running up some trunk 
and hiding behind it, or else by either or both of these 
Kinglets. They go in small parties, sometimes the 
two species together, and often in company with the 
Chickadees, flitting merrily from branch to branch in 
their hunt for larvae, lisping away in their almost 
insect-like dialect. In northern New England and 
Canada they build globular nests of moss, with side 
entrance, suspended well out on the limbs of evergreens 
in the forests. 

Now we come to the thrushes, another of our rather 
puzzling groups, though they are not as hard to master 
as the finches or warblers in that we have not nearlv 
so many species of them. In the Eastern and Middle 
districts of the United States and Canada there are but 
eight species and forms to learn, and most of these are 
perfectly distinct, some of them very well known. For 
instance, no one can mistake the Robin or the Blue- 
bird — these are both thrushes. Then there is the 
familiar Wood Thrush, the bird with bright reddish- 
brown upper parts and heavily spotted breast. The 
common Veery, or Wilson's Thrush, has also bright 
upper parts, though less so than the preceding, but 
smaller and fainter markings below. The Hermit 
Thrush has a bright rufous tail, much brighter than the 
brown of the back. The only great confusion can 
occur with the dark-backed thrushes, which are the 
Olive-backed and Alice's — the latter having under it 
another form or geographical race known as Bicknell's 

245 



THRUSH COUSINS 

Thrush, the only difference being that it averages a 
little brighter and smaller than the Alice's Thrush. 
Both these two species have upper parts dark olive 
brown and light but spotted under-parts; they differ 
mainly in that the Alice's Thrush has the light color 
of the under-parts, throat, sides of head, and eye-ring, 
pure white, while in the Olive-backed Thrush these 
parts have a buffy suffusion. 

If the bird student can bear these points of the 
thrushes in mind, there will be little trouble in identify- 
ing them, if one can only get a good view of the birds. 
But, "aye, there's the rub." The thrushes, all except 
the Robin and Bluebird, are timid, retiring creatures, 
fond of deep woods or swampy woodland solitudes. 
The latter are especially the Veery's choice, and we 
can oftener hear than see him, as he utters his ordinary 
"whee-u" call, or chants his simple "veery-veery-veery" 
lay. All the thrushes are good singers, with flute-like 
tones, and more continuous and elaborate songs than 
most birds. The Hermit Thrush is the finest singer 
of them all, with the Wood Thrush as a close second, 
and honorable mention for the efforts of the Olive- 
backed and Alice's Thrushes. The Robin's familiar 
outpourings have a homely beauty and strike a re- 
sponsive chord in all hearts, while few sounds of 
Nature delight us more than the ethereal aeolian harp 
of the Bluebird, especially as heard from the skies in 
March mingling with the sighing of the cool northwest 
wind — our harbinger of spring. 

246 



THRUSH COUSINS 

The Bluebird is usually the first thrush to arrive, fol- 
lowed soon, or even accompanied, by the Robin. The 
next to come is the hardy Hermit Thrush during the 
first half of April. We find it searching for larvae among 
the dead leaves in the woods, and sometimes I have 
met it when Ned and I were gathering the first blossoms 
of the ever-welcome trailing arbutus. Early in spring, 
it is also late in fall, and it appears mostly as a migrant, 
though I have found it as far south as Connecticut in 
the breeding season in high mountainous wooded 
regions. The Wood Thrush comes rather late in 
April, followed by the Veery in early May, and both of 
these beautiful species remain with us to breed. About 
the middle of May the Olive-backed and Alice's 
Thrushes usually appear, in the height of the warbler 
migration, soon to pass us by for the silent northern 
spruce forests. 

The Bluebird is the first of the group to go to nesting. 
Early in April they begin to build in the bird-box, or 
the hollow limb or woodpecker's hole in the orchard, 
by the roadside, or in swamp or pasture. By the tenth 
of the month some pairs have their five pale blue eggs. 
Ordinarily they raise at least two broods, and it is 
August before all of them are through with these 
household cares. Then they gather into flocks and 
have a good easy time here till they leave us in Novem- 
ber. It is pleasant to have them nest on our premises, 
and it is well worth while to put up boxes for their use. 
The surest form of architecture to attract them is a 

247 



THRUSH COUSINS 

section of a hollow limb, closed except for one quite 
small hole in the side, and nailed upright in a tree. 

Soon after the Bluebird, the Robins get busy with 
housekeeping, from April 20th and on. Everyone is 
familiar with their operations, and knows of the curious 
sites which they select for nests. In my garden and 
premises a pair has built on the piazza in the woodbine, 
another on a branch extending over the front walk, and 
two pairs close together at the same time in a shed. 
They are fond of the apple orchard, and a hole in a 
bank by the roadside is quite attractive. One foolish 
pair built flat on the ground by a roadside under a 
projection of turf, and a kindly neighbor had to put 
some branches in front of it to keep away cats. The 
mother bird was so shy that she would hop out whenever 
anyone passed by, but for a wonder she raised her 
brood of three. This is the usual number for the 
second brood, but it is generally four for the first, and 
very rarely five. I only remember seeing three nests 
with five eggs, out of the many hundreds I have ex- 
amined. Once Ned put his hand into a Robin's nest 
to see what was in it and broke an egg, the only time 
I ever knew him to have such a mishap. When he 
looked in, he saw that it was a rare set of five. How- 
ever, the bird still had the usual number! 

Since the Robin builds so near houses it is easy and 
interesting to watch the family life. One of the prettiest 
sights in bird life, I think, is to see the mother Robin, 
on a rainy day, stand in the nest and spread out her 

248 



THRUSH COUSINS 

wings over the youngsters like an umbrella, thus 
keeping them dry, despite the downpour. 

The Veery generally builds on the ground in the 
woods, among shrubbery, or very near mother earth 
in a clump of low bushes. Generally it is not easy to 
find the nest except by flushing the brooding bird from 
it, but in this way I have often found nests and photo- 
graphed them. The Veery will let one come quite 
close before leaving, and I have tried to snap her by 
walking up with the camera in hand, but she could not 
quite muster up courage to wait for me. Sometime, 
when I get round to it, I imagine it will not be so very 
hard to get a picture by setting the camera. I had a 
good chance this last season and would have tried it, 
had not some bad boys broken up the nest. It was on 
the edge of a little wood road quite near home, in some 
low weeds, about a foot from the ground, right in plain 
sight of any passer-by. It is strange what pleasure 
anyone can find in destroying a bird's home and eggs 
without purpose, not even for collecting, but just in 
wanton destruction. How infinitely much more real 
fun it would be to watch this family from the first to 
the time when the young were grown — seeing when 
each egg was laid, how long it took to hatch, how the 
parents fed the young, how long it took them to grow 
up, how they left the nest, and so on. But to destroy 
a bird's nest "for the fun of it" is lower than brutish, 
for even a "rascal" crow or jay robs nests for food. 

The nest of the Wood Thrush is generally built in 

249 



THRUSH COUSINS 

the fork of a sapling or low tree in the woods, from four 
to eight feet up. It is quite bulky, stiffened with mud 
like the Robin's nest, and the three to five blue eggs 
look almost exactly like the eggs of that bird. The 
dead leaves of which the foundation for the nest is 
usually made, though, "give it away," as to identity. 
The incubating Wood Thrush varies individually as 
to tameness, but generally it will allow a near, and 
sometimes a close approach. Several times I have 
been able to place my tripod and camera very near a 
nest and take pictures without flushing the birds, but 
only because I made every motion very slowly and 
carefully, taking a long time to do the work. On one 
such occasion Ned watched me, and thought it looked 
easy, but when he tried it, away went the bird, simply 
because he was in too much of a hurry. In such work 
with timid birds, after every new movement one must 
pause for the bird to become accustomed to that con- 
dition, ere it is ready for the next innovation. One 
mother Wood Thrush was so obliging that she let me 
reach within one foot of her and bend aside leaves 
without being startled to flight. But the next time I 
went, when she had young, I could not get within 
fifteen yards of her. The best rule in working with 
birds is to take advantage of their varying moods, and 
when a bird is "nice," use the present opportunity for 
all it is worth, as though there would never be another, 
for, indeed, very likely there never will be just such 
another again. 

250 



CHAPTER XV 

WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

(Wading and Swimming Birds) 

THE water-birds as a class, both waders and 
swimmers, though often neglected by bird 
students, to me seem exceedingly fascinating, 
as much so as any other group of birds, if not even 
more. This may be because I am almost a sort of 
water-bird myself. I have a fellow-feeling for the 
ducks because I swim, and for the white-winged gulls 
because for years I have loved to spread the white 
yacht sails to the breeze and skim over the brine. And 
as for the wading-birds, the mysteries of swamp and 
morass make strong appeal to my imagination, and I 
love to wade and scramble about and enjoy the free 
unconventionality of the realm where land and water 
intermingle. Such things, too, appeal to a boy like 
Ned, as they are bound to appeal to any lively boy. 
I think and hope that I must still be a boy, and I mean 
to be one as long as I live. 

One great trouble in studying the water-birds is their 
general scarcity. No matter how shy and retiring they 
are, if they only were somewhere, I would risk the 

251 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

enthusiast's ability to get in touch with them. But no 
one can see a thing which does not exist. Birds of this 
class are large enough to be conspicuous, and some of 
them are good to eat, and both these facts have served 
to invite persecution from gunners. So it is a lament- 
able fact that most of the wading or swimming birds, 
certainly in inland localities, can seldom be seen. You 
cannot walk out any day and say you will watch ducks, 
herons, or shore-birds. Unless you know a spot where 
some one pair or species breeds, you might go forth 
dozens of times and not see one solitary water-bird. 
Some time, we hope, there may be better conditions, 
as public sentiment is being aroused against the wanton 
extermination of our beautiful wild bird-life, and many 
excellent laws are being enacted and enforced. 

It would make this book too large if I were to go 
into full accounts of the wading and swimming birds, 
so I must simply and briefly mention the birds of this 
class which may be found in any typical inland country 
town, and refer my readers to my other books where I 
describe these birds and their ways, both in text and in 
photographs. "Among the Water-Fowl" deals with 
the swimming-birds, both of the ocean and of inland 
waters. Additional studies of these are given in 
"Wild Wings" with extended accounts of the shore- 
birds, besides other material. The system of classi- 
fication now accepted begins with our lowest order of 
birds, nearest to reptiles and fishes, the grebes, and 
works up to the highest, the thrushes. In this book we 

252 






WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

started in part way up the scale, with the gallinaceous 
birds, so now we will work backward thence to the 
beginning. 

The first group to mention in this plan is the shore- 
birds, and of these, unfortunately, there are now few, 
indeed, that visit our inland towns. A century or less 
ago, for instance, almost every barnyard had its Kil- 
deers (plovers), and every field its Upland Plovers 
(Bartramian Sandpipers). But to-day they are gone, 
save in rare instances. Great flocks of the beautiful 
Golden Plover used to descend upon the fields in their 
southward flight in late August and September, but 
now they are all but extinct. Too bad, too bad ! Along 
the shores of the larger ponds or lakes we may occa- 
sionally see a few Semipalmated Plovers, or Ring- 
necks, occasional Least and Semipalmated Sandpipers, 
perhaps in small flocks, and the Greater and Lesser 
Yellow-legs on shores or in meadows. The time for 
any of these is August and September, and for the 
Greater Yellow-legs even October. 

The only shore-bird which breeds is the Spotted 
Sandpiper, the little bird popularly called "Teeter," 
which runs along the margin of pond or river, teetering 
its body up and down in nervous fashion. Medical 
authorities decry our "teetering" with the rocking 
chair as conducive to nervous disorders, but this little 
chap teeters all his life and does not appear to suffer 
for it. Possibly it might add fifty per cent, to his years 
if we could teach him to calm himself and "be aisy!" 

253 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

By early June each sandpiper pair has scratched a 
little hollow, lined it with a few straws, and laid four 
pointed, heavily spotted eggs. The mother flutters 
and limps away when you surprise her upon them, and 
is even more solicitous when they have hatched and 
the odd little chicks are hiding from you, squatted 
flat on the ground, where it is very hard to see 
them. 

One day Ned and his mother were walking along the 
river bank, following a cart road, when away fluttered 
a Spotted Sandpiper, and there, just beside the road, 
under some weeds, was the nest with the usual four 
eggs. Of course I had to go and see it, and Ned very 
proudly brought me to the find. Off went the anxious 
bird, and I could then see her running along the pebbly 
river margin, saying "peet-weet, peet-weet." After 
setting the camera on the ground near by, with some 
rocks piled over it, we hid in the bushes and watched 
for the bird's return, ready to pull the thread. We had 
been quiet for only a few minutes when she came 
cautiously walking back, teetering almost constantly. 
She went right past the camera without noticing it, 
then to her nest, and settled down, poking and arranging 
the eggs with her bill. At the snap of the shutter she 
darted off. I set it again, and she soon came back. 
After securing several pictures, we went away and left 
her in peace. This nest was located, as is generally 
the case, near open water, but quite often a mere 
brook will suffice, and not infrequently the location is 

254 




Spotted Sandpiper scolding. "Even more solicitous when they have hatched' 

(p. 254). 




Semialmated Sandpiper feeding. "Along the shores of 



lakes" (p. 253). 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

well back from any water at all. I have found nests 
in such places as fields of potatoes or corn. 

There is another species closely related to the last 
which should not be confused with it — the Solitary 
Sandpiper. In May, or in August or September, we 
are liable now and then to meet one feeding along the 
muddy or spongy edge of some little pond hole, or in 
almost any sort of a wet place. Sometimes there will 
be a pair of them, but more often the bird is alone, 
solitary in reality, as in name. It nests in the far north, 
and until very recently its breeding habits were un- 
known, till its eggs began to be discovered, in the 
Canadian Northwest, in abandoned Robins' nests up 
in trees. It is not known to breed in the United States. 
One can tell it from the Spotted Sandpiper by its 
much darker back, and from the Yellow-legs by its 
greenish legs. It is a beautiful, gentle bird, and I love 
to sit and watch one feed in a bog, so graceful, so neat 
in person, with the bearing of real refinement — sand- 
piper good breeding. 

Next comes the order of marsh-dwellers, the Paludi- 
coloe of science. Of these our principal group is the 
rails. These are birds which the average person 
never sees and has never heard of. But if one find 
the right place, some very oozy bog, overgrown with 
"cat-tails," and will throw a stone into it, so as to make 
a loud splash, like as not there will instantly arise a 
series of loud, wailing, craking cries. These are the 
rails, not fence rails, but real live ones, called thus, 

255 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

perhaps, because they are narrow across, "thin as a 
rail," so that they can the more easily slip through the 
dense tangles in which they live. One may suppose 
that the fat ones got stuck, but the thin survived, and 
gave rise to a thin race! 

With us there are two common kinds of rails — the 
Virginia Rail and the Sora, the latter being the best 
known, especially to sportsmen, for rails are hunted 
with dogs, and their flesh is good eating, as those things 
go. But in these days of decreasing bird-life, the true 
bird-lover is more inclined to look to the butcher for 
meat and to the wild birds for pleasure of eye and ear 
rather than of palate. To esteem a bird in accordance 
with its edibility is getting to seem a little uncouth and 
old-fashioned. A while ago I was showing to a gen- 
tleman of foreign extraction some of my best bird 
pictures, enlarged and hand-colored, which I really 
thought were pretty nice. As I showed him each 
picture, his one and repeated question was, "Is it good 
to eat?" If I said "yes," he looked rather pleased; 
if I said "no," he gave a sort of impatient grunt of 
disgust — no good! I soon began to have "tired feel- 
ings," and was not sorry to depart. 

These rails are rather small birds, about the size of 
the Bobolink, short of tail but long of toe, and well 
developed in the legs. The Sora is dark colored, with 
short bill, while the Virginia Rail, though but a trifle 
larger, can be told by its reddish-brown color and 
longer bill. Neither of them likes to fly, and they only 

256 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

do so when migrating, or when compelled by the close 
approach of some intruder. Then they will flutter 
feebly up and drop into the grass before going many 
rods. They have their run- ways through the tangle 
of grass and weed, and run and climb with the greatest 
of nimbleness. They are especially active at twilight, 
and perhaps at night. In the dusk of the evening I 
have seen them appear again and again at the edge of 
some marsh, or scurry across open spaces from one 
clump of reeds to another, and I have seen them run 
on lily pads. I have found their nests, not so much 
in the thickest tangles as near the border of a meadow 
or bog, in the rather sparse meadow grass, where the 
water is only a few inches deep. They build up 
a little hollowed platform of dead grass among the 
green stems, slightly above the water, and draw and 
tie the ends of the grass over it, to form a nice little 
canopy. All rails lay a large number of eggs, six to 
thirteen ordinarily, and once I found sixteen in a 
Sora's nest. 

The young of all rails with which I am acquainted 
are covered with a black down, and, almost from birth, 
are great runners. Once I tried to catch a young rail. 
It ran out into a place where there were few stems of 
grass, almost an open mud-flat. I sprinted along, 
plastering myself with mud, but sure of my prize, 
which I only wanted to photograph before releasing. 
Just as I thought I could seize it, suddenly it stopped, 
out there in the open, with next to nothing to conceal 

257 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

it. But for the life of me I could not see where it had 
gone, and I finally had to give it up. 

When I was of high school age I took a companion 
of about my years into a famous rail-bog, where many 
pairs nested, as he wanted to find some of their eggs. 
The place was a sort of bottomless ooze, and we had 
to lay out planks and step on them. Though I had 
cautioned him, he soon slipped off and got into the 
mud. We were rather near shore, and he was so 
frightened that instead of climbing back on the plank, 
he started to wade ashore, despite my protests. Deeper 
and deeper he sank, till he was in all over. Now he 
was frantic with terror and began to cry. I thought 
surely he would drown, but he finally crawled out on 
shore, plastered with black oozy slime from head to 
foot. Choking with mud and sobs, in about equal 
proportions, he started for home spluttering that I'd 
never have the chance to get him into such a scrape 
again — how ungrateful! This was just on the border 
of the city of Boston, and I badly wanted to hear all 
about his trip through the city streets in that rig. But 
he hardly would speak to me after that, much less go 
into detail. This incident goes to show that if anyone 
is afraid of mud and water, he or she had better let the 
rails alone and study the safe and darling little chippy- 
birds ! 

There are some other rails that must receive only 
scant mention. The Little Black Rail and the Yellow 
Rail are both very rare, and have almost more the 

258 




Nest of Sora. "They build a little hollowed platform" (p. 257). 




Young American Bitterns. "A rude nest of stems 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

habits of meadow mice than birds, as they run through 
the grass, and it is next to impossible to make them fly. 
Sometimes they are caught alive by the hunting dogs. 
Then there is the large species called King Rail, found 
in Middle and Southern States, seldom plentifully, 
and the Clapper Rail, or Marsh Hen, of the salt marshes 
along the coast from Connecticut southward. The 
Florida Gallinule is much like a large rail, and is found 
sparingly in fresh-water bogs, being common only in 
the South, where I have found their nests, similar to 
the rails', among the rushes in bogs. The American 
Coot, sometimes called "Blue Peter," or Mud Hen, is 
rather common, in the same sort of haunts, in migra- 
tion. Having lobed feet and compact plumage, it 
swims, as does the webless gallinule, and is often mis- 
taken for a duck. It is a gray bird about the size of a 
pullet, with bill like the latter and a patch of white 
above its base. They bob their heads back and forth 
as they swim. Out in the Northwest I have found 
hundreds of their nests in the great sloughs in the 
reeds, basket-like affairs of reed stems, with from six 
to a dozen finely speckled eggs. 

Next we have the heron tribe, and interesting birds 
they are. The Great Blue Heron is the biggest of 
them, so tall that it gets the popular name of Blue 
Crane, which is inaccurate, for it is no crane at all. 
They are not plenty, and nest now mostly in the North, 
but also in wild Southern swamps, in both of which 
regions I have found their nests, generally in colonies, 

259 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

and up giant trees. But we may now and then run 
across a solitary Great Blue by the edge of some 
body of water or feeding in a morass. They are 
among the wariest of birds, and will not allow a 
person to come anywhere near them — not if they 
know it. 

Another well-known Northern heron, famous for its 
great nesting-colonies, is the Black-crowned Night 
Heron, familiarly called Quawk. On the seacoast 
they are more common than in the interior, in which 
latter region they are very locally distributed. In the 
locality where I now live they are seldom seen, except 
in migration, when I sometimes hear the harsh "quak, 
quak," as one flies over in the evening, high in air. 
I have often been into their rookeries in lonely swamps 
where from a dozen to thousands of pairs had built 
their rude nests, sometimes half a dozen or more in one 
tree. Everything there is nasty and ill-smelling. One 
of my earliest recollections of herons is of climbing to 
one of these nests, in a small colony in a cedar swamp, 
and having the young, according to their habit, vomit 
out partly digested fish from their crops into my face 
as I climbed. This bird is of good size, the adults 
quite light in color, but the immature birds are of a 
dull mottled brown. 

The American Bittern, Stake-driver, or Post-driver, 
as it is variously called, is of about the same size, and 
somewhat resembles the young of the preceding, only 
the brown is of a darker, richer shade, and the adult 

260 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

has a prominent black stripe down each side of the 
neck. This is the bird which makes the booming or 
pumping noise out in the meadow or bog. In such 
places it lives, never in woods, nor in colonies, unless 
one can call a few pairs scattered over a big swamp 
such. They nest with us, and each pair makes a rude 
nest of stems on the wet ground in the bog, gener- 
ally among reeds or rushes, sometimes grass, and 
lays from four to six large deep olive brown eggs, 
very different from the pale blue eggs of the other 
herons. 

Like it in some respects in haunts and habits is its 
relative, the Least Bittern, a tiny fellow that is much 
like a rail in size and appearance, though its long neck 
serves to distinguish it. It is yellowish in color, with 
dark greenish back and crown. Its life is spent slipping 
about amid the tangles of the bog, where it builds its 
frail platform of a nest suspended between the reed 
stems in a clump, usually three or four feet up. The 
four or five eggs are bluish-white. 

Probably the best known and most generally dis- 
tributed of our herons is the common Green Heron, or 
Poke, a rather small, dark-colored species. Any 
wood-bordered pond or wooded or bushy swamp is 
liable to have from one to several pairs inhabiting it. 
They live on small fish, frogs, lizards, and the like, 
and nest in solitary fashion, either in some low ever- 
green in the woods just up from the pond, or in a bush 
out in the swamp. When one approaches the nest, 

261 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

the old bird will fly away and then return and perch a 
little way off and say all sorts of unutterable things in 
the uncouth heron-language. 

In a certain swamp near my home several pairs of 
Green Heron usually nest. The place is a tract of 
alder bushes overflowed from the pond. The water 
is from knee to waist-deep, and the bushes grow out 
of the water. Once I undertook to photograph a 
Green Heron on a nest which was favorably situated, 
very low down. I set up the tripod near by, under the 
next bush, tied the focus-cloth about the top to suggest 
a camera, decked it with leaves, and left it over night, 
for the heron to become accustomed to it. Next 
morning I found her on the nest all right, so I sub- 
stituted my camera for the cloth, covered and arranged 
it with thread attachment, and then hid about thirty 
yards away between three tree sprouts which grew 
from a stump, a nice little island nook. After about 
half an hour's wait, the heron came sneaking back, 
climbing almost parrot-like from bush to bush. All the 
time she was jerking her little tail in such a nervous, 
comical fashion that I felt like laughing right out, 
which, of course, would not do if I was to get a photo- 
graph. After some hesitation she stepped into the 
nest and settled down, but the instant I drew in my 
slack of thread she saw it move, and departed in as 
great terror as though I had fired a cannon. After 
awhile she plucked up courage to return, and this time 
I saw to it that the shutter would spring the instant I 

262 




B) 



Green Heron and nest. "Came sneaking back" (p. 262). 




Green Heron incubating. "Plucked up courage to return" (p. 262). 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

pulled. I finally "got" her, three times on the nest 
and once just stepping upon it. 

These are the five common herons that are ordinarily 
seen in the Eastern and Middle States. A number of 
other species are well known in the South, and nearly 
all of them have appeared accidentally as far north as 
New England, particularly the Little Blue Heron, the 
American Egret (celebrated for its aigrette plumes), 
and more rarely the Yellow-crowned Night Heron. 

We come now to the swimming-birds, and find the 
Anatidce, or ducks and geese, in order. Almost every- 
one is interested in wild ducks. If a flock are known 
to alight in a pond, it is the talk of the neighborhood, 
and, unfortunately, every person owning a gun is crazy 
to get a shot. Consequently they are scarce in our 
Eastern districts, and with the growth of population 
are becoming more and more so. It seems so strange 
and delightful out in the Northwest to see companies 
of wild ducks swimming about in small ponds or pools 
right by the homes of settlers, fearless and unmolested, 
raising their broods in the neighboring grassy sloughs, 
practically in the barnyard pasture. How delightful 
if it could be so here! Once, indeed, recently, I came 
upon a brood of young Black Ducks, with their mother, 
within two minutes' walk of my house, on the edge of 
a meadow, but that was a rare treat. 

This species just mentioned, properly the Dusky 
Duck, but popularly known as the Black Duck, is the 
best known and most common fresh-water duck of the 

263 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

eastern part of our country. They are shy birds and 
keep pretty well out of sight by day in the swamps. 
At dusk they begin to fly about and come into the 
ponds to swim and feed. I have stood silently on the 
edge of a morass, listened to their subdued quackings 
as they fed, heard the whistle of their wings, and seen 
their shadowy forms as they passed overhead. I have 
found their nests, too, now and then, but always by 
accident. The nest is always on the ground, hidden 
among the rank vegetation, or by the edge of a body 
of water among the rushes or under a bush. Not 
long ago I was shown one under an isolated thorn 
bush right out in an open field, not far back from the 
bank of a river. A trout fisherman happened along 
and flushed the bird from her eggs. These are usually 
from eight to twelve in number, as is true of nearly all 
ducks, and they are laid usually by the middle of April, 
sometimes earlier. The nests of all ducks are lined 
softly with down which the mother plucks from her 
breast. These ducks remain with us in winter as long 
as they can find water. I have seen them swimming 
in brooks in the swamps when the ponds were frozen 
over. 

There is one other species which breeds in all our 
Eastern States, the beautiful Wood or Summer Duck. 
The drake is one of the most gorgeously beautiful of 
all our native birds. It is deplorable that they are 
decreasing so rapidly as to be on the brink of extermina- 
tion. Some states are entirely prohibiting their being 

264 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

shot for terms of years, and this should be done in all. 
A few pairs still remain in the locality where I live, 
and it is very interesting to run across them from time 
to time. They feed in the ponds and swamps, but 
when it comes to nesting, they are very different from 
the Black Duck, for they resort to hollow trees, and 
apparently are liable to go almost anywhere. Their 
favorite choice seems to be an old hollow apple tree in 
an orchard. In certain orchards they nest year after 
year. Becoming familiar with man, particularly if 
not disturbed, they grow very bold and select the 
strangest sort of places for nesting-sites. 

By all odds the most remarkable incident of this 
sort in my experience was when a pair selected a barn. 
The female would go through a broken clapboard into 
the hayloft. Scooping a hollow in the top of the hay- 
mow, she lined it with her down and laid ten eggs. 
While she was laying, the owner of the place would 
see the happy pair at daybreak perched on the ridge- 
pole of the barn, making love. In another barn a nest 
was begun, but the birds were driven off. Another 
pair chose a hollow in a maple tree bordering the road, 
within a few rods of a house. The hole was only about 
five feet from the ground, and most of the neighbors 
knew of the nest, and would look in as they went by. 
Still another odd nesting-site came to my notice. Near 
where I live a farmer had a pig-pen just back of his 
house, and in it grew a hollow apple tree. On the 
eleventh of April this tree was cut down, and it was 

265 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

discovered that in the hollow trunk were eleven fresh 
eggs of the Wood Duck. 

That same spring there was a legislative hearing 
regarding the abolition of spring shooting of wildfowl 
in the State, the existing law allowing shooting up to 
the first of May. Speaking for the proposed change, 
I showed by this instance and others the folly and 
enormity of a law which allowed these valuable and 
fast disappearing birds to be shot when they actually 
had eggs. I am glad to say that the obnoxious law 
was repealed, and all shooting forbidden after the first 
of January, which is as it should be. The wildfowl 
mate very early in the spring, or even in winter. In 
the spring the mated birds are tame and easily shot. 
Moreover, they are usually in poor flesh at this time and 
almost worthless as food. At any rate, it is a case of 
killing the goose that lays the golden egg, and every 
bird-lover ought to use all influence against such 
atrocities as spring shooting, and in every way take a 
public-spirited stand for the preservation of all our 
beautiful harmless wild life, the existence of which adds 
so great charm to the outdoor world. As I heard it 
well put by a teacher at the legislative hearing, "Why 
have not we, who are as fond of birds as you hunters, 
just as much right to demand that we shall have birds 
to see and study as you to demand that you shall have 
them to shoot?" 

There are various other ducks which drop into our 
ponds and rivers from time to time, especially in 

266 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

migration, which must at least be mentioned, though 
their numbers are but small. Some of these casual 
migrant visitors are, for instance, the fine large Mallard, 
which is more of a Western species; the Pintail, Bald- 
pate, and Gadwall, which are grayish, rather nonde- 
script in the fall plumage, when we generally see them, 
and hard to tell apart; the Red-head, somewhat 
similar to the larger, whiter and rarer Canvasback, 
which latter is now very rare with us; the curious 
little Ruddy Duck, a tame brownish bird, with a stiff 
tail, now and then appearing in flocks, which are soon 
shot off; those miniature ducks, the Blue-winged and 
Green-winged Teals, delightful, sprightly little people, 
all too scarce. The Greater and Lesser Scaups, or 
Blue-bills, sometimes flock in to the larger ponds or 
lakes late in the fall, when we may also see the Ameri- 
can Golden-eye, or Whistler, which makes a pleasing 
aeolian-harp humming sound with its wings as it flies. 
Its small near relative, the Bufflehead, I used to see, 
but less often of late years. A heavy easterly gale in 
October and November will often drive in certain sea 
ducks from the ocean to ponds far inland. Such are 
the three large black or dusky species called Scoters — 
the Surf, White- winged and American Scoter — and the 
black and white, noisy "Old Squaw," or Long- tailed 
Duck. I remember one storm, in the middle of one 
October, which drove hundreds of these sea ducks 
into ponds a hundred miles from the coast. 

Besides the above there are also three species classed 

267 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

as Fish Ducks, or Shelldrakes, species with long serrated 
bills, well adapted to seizing fish. They are the Red- 
breasted Merganser, the Goosander, and the Hooded 
Merganser, that being the order of their abundance. 
The first two are quite often seen from November to 
April in rivers or ponds, and, when these partly freeze 
up, in air holes, or even on the ice. In winter they are 
grayish birds above, and white beneath, with white on 
the wings. The head is crested, brown usually, but 
the heads of the males change to a dark green in early 
spring. 

All these marine or Fish Ducks are poor eating, 
despite the best of cooking and parboiling, but with 
ordinary culinary methods they are impossible. On a 
southern yachting cruise one of our party shot two 
Red-breasted Shelldrakes, which the darky steward 
served up for dinner, as he would have done Mallards 
or Canvasbacks. Each man got the first mouthful at 
about the same time, and there was a simultaneous 
scramble for the hatchway to dispose thereof. The 
remainder was promptly fed to the fishes, and we 
indulged no more in roast shelldrake! 

There is but one species of wild goose which we can 
expect to visit us inland, the Canada Goose, which we 
ordinarily see in wedge-shaped flocks in early spring 
or late fall, gliding along with measured wing-beats, 
and honking forth those wild calls that send thrills 
through everyone who is capable of being stirred by 
the sights and sounds of the wilds. Sometimes they 

268 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

descend into the ponds, and there is a scurrying among 
the gunners. I have found their nests out in the wilder 
parts of the Northwest, and there studied them as there 
is little chance to do here in civilization. 

People usually think of the graceful and beautiful 
gulls and terns as being found only by the sea. In the 
East this is mainly true, but in the Northwest many of 
the marshy or alkaline lakes fairly teem with a number 
of kinds. But with us in the inland country town all 
we can hope for is to see a straggler now and then, if 
we have any ponds or lakes of fair size. In the early 
fall we may occasionally see a tern, probably the Com- 
mon Tern, a white bird, about the size of a pigeon, 
gray on the back, and black-capped, whose long narrow 
wings move rapidly as it darts about, plunging headlong 
into the water after the small bait fish upon which it 
lives. Now and then the Black Tern, a smaller, 
slaty-colored bird of similar form and habits, may 
appear. Later in the season, about November, an 
occasional gull may winnow about the lakes. Probably 
it will be a Herring Gull, or perhaps the Ring-billed 
Gull, a trifle smaller. These are both much larger 
than terns, of heavier build and slower in motions. 
Adults are mainly white, while the younger birds are 
brown in their first autumn and gray in their second. 
A good time for the dweller inland to watch the gulls 
is when visiting some seaport city like New York, 
from November to April. Go down to the wharves 
or out in a ferry boat, and one will see more gulls in an 

269 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

hour than in the home town in ten lifetimes. How- 
ever, I have seen them flying over the hill towns in 
midwinter, high up in the air, probably migrating to 
some distant body of water. 

Perhaps the most satisfactory of our water-birds to 
actually see and watch are the peculiar tribe of diving- 
birds considered as the lowest of our forms of bird- 
life, the loons and grebes. Of these we may hope to 
meet in our ponds one species of the former and three 
of the latter. The common Loon, or Great Northern 
Diver, is the splendid big fellow, as large as a goose, 
which we note some morning floating on the placid 
lake. Now and then it dives below the surface, and after 
a minute or so, which seems a long time to hold one's 
breath, comes up quite a distance away. They breed 
from northern New England northward, and we see 
them on their migrations, mostly in the fall. They are 
not apt to rise on wing and leave the pond by day, but 
under cover of night, as their wings are small for the 
size and weight of their bodies, and they do not attempt 
to fly oftener than necessary. Their cries sound like 
a sort of wild laughter, "ha-ha-ha-ha-ha," and so the 
saying has come into use, "crazy as a loon." One 
hears these sounds mostly at night or in threatening 
weather, and they certainly sound weird enough. 

Of the grebes which come into fresh Eastern waters, 
the largest and scarcest is the Holboell's, or Red-necked 
Grebe, which is nearly as large as a duck. The other 
two are smaller, about the size of teal — the Horned 

270 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

Grebe, and the Pied-billed Grebe or Dabchick. The 
Horned Grebe is so called because in the spring plumage 
it has, particularly the male, a sort of muff of long 
feathers on its head, some of which stick up like little 
horns. They are otherwise strikingly colored with 
varied rich browns and black, but in autumn they are 
reduced to plain gray back and white breast. The 
Dabchick, which is by far the commoner of the three, 
can be distinguished by its browner upper breast, and, 
in spring, its plainer garb. Most of the grebes seen 
will prove to be this latter. The time to expect them 
is during May and in September and October. They 
look so pretty, floating on the surface of the pond, often 
among lily pads, dabbling in the water with the bill. 
Usually we see each bird alone, but they are apt to 
migrate in small flocks, and the other members of the 
party are probably scattered about the pond, perhaps 
hiding in the reeds along the margin, or crawled out 
upon the shore to sun themselves and preen their 
feathers. They do this last also when afloat, and we 
can see them turn over on one side to get at the lower 
feathers, and the silky white under-parts will flash in 
the sun. It is even harder for them than for the loon 
to fly, for their wings are very small, and they likewise 
migrate by night. They are great divers, and if 
alarmed will plunge or sink into the depths, come up 
a long way off, stick out only the bill for a breath of air, 
sink again, and get out of sight without showing them- 
selves even once. Knowing their powers they are not 

271 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

very shy, and will not fly away as would wild ducks 
when we approach. So we may quietly watch the 
grebe from the shore, and, especially if one has a strong 
field glass, it is a beautiful sight. The popular name 
of "Water Witch" is a tribute to the tribe's aquatic 
skill. 

Though out in the West I have seen thousands of 
these grebes, and others, in their breeding colonies, I 
never had a better chance to observe one intimately 
than one May right at home. A pair of Horned Grebes 
alighted in a brook, but could not fly out, because, with 
their small wings, they require a lot of room to flutter 
and patter over the water in getting started. One of 
them disappeared, but the other stayed in the part of 
the brook near a house with a flock of tame ducks. A 
netting had been placed at the upper end to keep the 
ducks from swimming upstream, and below there was 
a bridge, under which the bird apparently did not like 
to go. The brook was hardly two feet wide, and Ned 
and I went there for several days and watched and 
photographed His Majesty. When we approached, 
the pretty fellow, a male in fine plumage, would dive 
and paddle off under water like a streak, and it was 
so shallow that he was in plain sight, and we saw that 
he used only his feet, not the wings, as propellers. 
Sometimes he would flutter along the surface of water, 
and then dive. After a time he became used to us, so 
I would sit quietly on the bank with the reflecting 
camera, while Ned would make him swim back and 

272 




Red-breasted Merganser. "Quite often seen in rivers and ponds" (p. 268). 




The Horned Grebe in the brook. "Giving me splendid camera shots" (p. 272). 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

forth past me, giving me splendid camera shots. Then 
he would float quietly, a little apart from the ducks, 
preen his feathers, flap his wings, or dive and chase 
small fish. We could see him darting after them with 
great eagerness, now this way, now that. 

Finally we stretched a mesh of chicken wire for a net 
across the brook. Ned chased the grebe into the wire, 
and I seized him as he was struggling to get through. 
When I took him out of water he would wave his 
muscular paddles so fast that they fairly blurred to our 
sight. These join the body down by the tail, so that 
the grebe must walk almost upright. He made awk- 
ward work of it on land, falling flat when he tried to 
run. After photographing him, we boxed him up and 
expressed him to the Bronx Zoological Park, in New 
York City, where I think he lived very happily with a 
mate they happened to have for him. 

This brings me to the end of the pleasant task of 
telling in a familiar way of the pleasure which I, by 
myself, or in the lively, cheerful company of a boy, or 
of others, have found in following up the birds of a 
typical country region and becoming better and better 
acquainted with them. I hope that Ned may find 
bird-study a life-long delight and means of health and 
vigor, as I have done, and with him a host of others — 
boys and girls, men and women. 

This is not saying that there are not a great many 
other interesting things in life. Indeed, as for myself, 
I am not a mere bird-specialist, but am interested in 

273 



WATER-BIRD WAIFS 

various other lines, aside from bird-study and my 
regular profession, such, for instance, as music. I do 
think, however, that it is a great advantage for everyone 
to have some sort of avocation, certainly at least one 
outdoor hobby, for the sake of health, and in any case 
a deep and abiding love of the beauties and glories of 
Nature, which makes for the strengthening of power 
of observation, the broadening and deepening of the 
life, and the cultivation of a spirit of calmness, optimism 
and buoyancy, which, if gained, will keep one in spirit 
ever young. 

All too long, notably during the greater part of the 
nineteenth century, there has run riot a craze for the 
slaughter, for one purpose or other, of all the wild bird 
and animal life of this country. Some valuable and 
interesting species have been exterminated, and others 
are all but gone. Surely it is high time to call a halt! 
Fortunately, during recent years, and notably in the 
last two decades, there has set in a mighty tide of in- 
terest in these wild creatures — of sympathetic study of 
their habits, of kindness to them and of laws for their 
protection. The more universal this humane sentiment 
becomes, the better for our beautiful and harmless wild 
life, and the enjoyment of it by increasing multitudes. 
Many factors aid in the spread of this movement, min- 
imizing the desire to kill and multiplying enjoyment of 
wild bird and animal life unharmed and at peace in 
natural surroundings, not the least of which is already 
proving to be "the sport of bird study." 

274 



THE BIRD-HOUSE OF SCIENCE 

AND 

A BIRD CALENDAR 



THE BIRD-HOUSE OF SCIENCE 

OF NORTHEASTERN NORTH AMERICA 

SIMPLIFIED FOR THE BEGINNER, 
WITH ONLY POPULAR ENGLISH NAMES 



A.— SWIMMING BIRDS 

I. ORDER OF DIVING BIRDS. 

1. Grebe Family. 

2. Loon Family. 

3. Auk, Murre and Puffin Family. 

n. ORDER OF LONG-WINGED SWIMMERS. 

1. Jaeger Family. 

2. Gull and Tern Family. 

m. ORDER OF TUBE-NOSED SWIMMERS. 

1. Petrel and Shearwater Family. 

IV. ORDER OF FOUR-TOES-WEBBED SWIMMERS. 

1. Gannet Family. 

2. Cormorant Family. 

V. ORDER OF GOOSE-LIKE SWIMMERS, OR WILDFOWL. 

1. Duck, Goose and Swan Family. 

B.— WADING BIRDS 

I. ORDER OF HERON-LIKE WADERS. 

1. Heron, Egret and Bittern Family. 

H. ORDER OF MARSH-DWELLING WADERS. 
1. Rail, Gallinule and Coot Family. 

277 



THE BIRD-HOUSE OF SCIENCE 

III. ORDER OF SHORE-DWELLING WADERS, OR SHORE- 

BIRDS. 

1. Phalarope Family. 

2. Snipe and Sandpiper Family. 

3. Plover Family. 

4. Oystercatcher Family. 

C— LAND BIRDS 

I. ORDER OF GALLINACEOUS OR HEN-LIKE BIRDS. 

1. Grouse and Quail Family. 

2. Pheasant Family. (Introduced.) 

II. ORDER OF PIGEON-LIKE BIRDS. 
1. Pigeon and Dove Family. 

in. ORDER OF BIRDS OF PREY. 

1. Vulture Family. 

2. Hawk Family. (Hawks, Falcons and Eagles.) 

3. Owl Family. 

IV. ORDER OF CUCKOO-LIKE BIRDS. 

1. Cuckoo Family. 

2. Kingfisher Family. 

V. ORDER OF WOODPECKER-LIKE BIRDS. 
1. Woodpecker Family. 

VI. ORDER OF LONG-WINGED LAND BIRDS. 

1. Nighthawk and Whippoorwill Family. 

2. Swift Family. 

3. Hummingbird Family. 

VII. ORDER OF PERCHING BIRDS. (This includes nearly all 
our smaller Land Birds.) 

1. Flycatcher Family. 

2. Lark Family. 

3. Crow and Jay Family. 

4. Starling Family. (Introduced.) 

5. Blackbird, Oriole, Meadowlark Family. 

278 



THE BIRD-HOUSE OF SCIENCE 

6. Finch and Sparrow Family, etc. 

7. Tanager Family. 

8. Swallow Family. 

9. Waxwing Family. 

10. Shrike Family. 

11. Vireo Family. 

12. Wood Warbler Family. 

13. Pipit Family. 

14. Thrasher and Wren Family. 

15. Creeper Family. 

16. Nuthatch and Chickadee Family. 

17. Kinglet and Gnatcatcher Family. 

18. Thrush and Bluebird Family. 



279 



A BIRD CALENDAR 



WINTER 

Winter conditions begin with November and last till March. 
The winter visitors from the North may arrive from early Novem- 
ber and on. Watch for them among evergreens, in sheltered 
swamps, in pastures, or on open land where weeds have gone to 
seed. These birds can sometimes be approached and photo- 
graphed with a long-focus reflecting camera. 

In woods, or along their edge, Northern hawks or owls may be 
found, as well as those species which are resident. Flights of 
the Snowy Owl are most apt to occur, if at all, in early December, 
particularly along the coast. 

Before the snow gets too deep, explore heavily timbered tracts 
to look up old nests of hawks and owls, which are likely to be 
occupied again. This will save time when the busier season 
comes. Look up new timber tracts. These woodland explora- 
tions in cold weather are fine, exhilarating exercise, especially if 
in hilly country. The wintry woods are interesting. 

Put out food for birds around home. Hang up suet for 
woodpeckers, nuthatches and the Chickadee. Put trays of seed 
under some improvised shelter for Juncos, Tree Sparrows, etc. 
If there are quail in the vicinity, put out grain for them, sheltered 
so that the snow will not bury it. A large pile of hayseed is good, 
which can be readily dug out and turned over after each snowfall. 
By setting a camera focused on these baits, with thread attached 
to shutter, many a fine photograph may be secured. 

From the latter part of January and through February locate 
by the hootings of the large owls the part of the woods which they 
frequent, for there they will probably nest. 

280 



A BIRD CALENDAR 

Regular daily exercise in the open air throughout the winter 
is the best prevention for colds and pulmonary diseases, and will 
keep one in fine, vigorous condition. In this way alone the sport 
of bird study would save thousands of lives, giving an interesting 
incentive to exercise outdoors. 

SPRING 

Spring is the harvest time for photographing birds, in which 
the nesting season gives by far the greatest opportunities, notably 
the last week of May and the first three of June. Incubation and 
rearing of young lasts from slightly over three weeks with the 
smaller birds to over two months with large ones like hawks or 
owls. 

March (first half). The first harbinger of spring, the Great 
Horned Owl, deposits its eggs from the last of February to the 
early days of March, seldom later, and is ready (?) to be photo- 
graphed. Bluebirds, Song Sparrows, Robins and Red-winged 
Blackbirds arrive, early or late, according to the weather. 

March (last half). The Barred Owl lays from the middle of 
the month to early April. Early in this period expect the Fox 
Sparrow, Meadowlark, Rusty Blackbird, Cowbird and Wood- 
cock, and somewhat later therein the Kingfisher, Grackle, Phoebe, 
Mourning Dove, Wilson's Snipe, Swamp and Field Sparrows, 
with Cedar birds, wild ducks and Canada Geese in flocks. Be 
keen to get the first records of the season for the birds' arrivals, 
and the last ones of their departures. 

April (early). Red-tailed Hawk and Woodcock lay, also 
Long-eared, Screech and Saw-whet Owls, and some of the Red- 
shouldered Hawks. A few more arrivals straggle in, such as the 
Ruby-crowned Kinglet and more of the hardier Golden-crown, 
which also winters, Vesper and Savanna Sparrows, Purple Finch, 
Myrtle and Yellow Palm Warblers, Great Blue Heron, American 
Pipit. Various ducks, the Loon, and the Holboell's Grebe are 
in transit, and may visit any inland waters. 

April (middle). Most of the Red-shouldered Hawks have 
laid by this time, also the Dusky Duck. Bluebirds, Crows and 

281 



A BIRD CALENDAR 

Robins also begin to lay. Notable arrivals are the Hermit Thrush, 
Sapsucker, and the first straggling swallows — Tree, Bank and 
Barn. 

April (late). Hairy Woodpecker, White-breasted Nuthatch 
and Song Sparrow lay, and quite a number of birds arrive — all 
the swallows, the herons, Whippoorwill, Chimney Swift, Towhee, 
Brown Thrasher, Chebec, and a few warblers, such as Black- 
throated Green, Black and White, and Oven-bird. 

May (first third). During this time the following hawks lay 
their eggs, usually finishing by the 10th: Fish, Cooper's, Marsh, 
Sparrow, and Broad-winged, the latter sometimes later. Night 
Heron colonies have eggs early in the month. Blue Jay, King- 
fisher, Vesper Sparrow, Grackles, Wood Duck and Ruffed Grouse 
lay — the latter sometimes earlier and later, and the Wood Duck 
sometimes earlier. In this period the great majority of our smaller 
birds not already mentioned begin to appear. The migration of 
all the warblers is in full progress by about the 10th. Horned 
and Pied-billed Grebes appear in the ponds or streams. Most 
of our small summer-resident birds arrive. 

May (second third). The following lay their eggs: Swamp, 
Field, Chipping and Savanna Sparrows, Meadowlark, Phoebe, 
Barn Swallow, Green Heron, Louisiana Water Thrush, Sharp- 
shinned Hawk. By this time all summer residents have arrived. 
The migration of shore-birds is at its height, especially, of course, 
in evidence along the coast, and likewise of the warblers and 
small land-birds in general. At this time there are more kinds 
and larger numbers of birds to be seen than at any other time of 
year. This is the time of times to detect rarities, and the bird- 
lover might well wish to be afield every minute and to be multiplied 
a thousand-fold. 

May (last third). Another contingent are now busy laying: 
Downy Woodpecker, Flicker, Chickadee, Purple Finch, Brown 
Thrasher, Wood Thrush, Chewink, Veery, Spotted Sandpiper, 
Oven-bird, and early individuals of any of the warblers. The 
migrants are disappearing, the last being the Blackpoll Warbler 
in the early days of June. 

June. By the first few days of the month nearly all the small 



A BIRD CALENDAR 

birds have ordinarily completed their sets, unless the season be 
very backward, and many individuals in the last week of May. 
The great bulk of the small birds are now incubating, and by the 
10th many eggs are hatching. The month from May 25th to 
June 25th offers more photographic opportunities bird-wise than 
all the rest of the year combined. 

Some species which breed late are the following: Kingbird, 
Crested Flycatcher, Orchard Oriole, about the 10th; Vireos and 
Wrens are often somewhat late; Wood Pewee, 15th to 20th; Cedar- 
bird and Chimney Swift from 20th to early July; the Goldfinch 
last of all, usually the last week in July or first in August. 



SUMMER 

Most of the species have finished or are finishing breeding by 
the time of the summer solstice. A few, just mentioned, habitually 
breed in summer. Some whose eggs have been destroyed lay a 
second litter, and others habitually rear two broods, in consequence 
of which facts occupied nests in sparing numbers may be found 
till late in the summer. The following species are among those 
which often raise two broods: Bob- white, Phoebe, Robin, Catbird, 
Bluebird, House Wren, Yellow-throat, most sparrows and swal- 
lows, Red-winged Blackbird, Meadowlark, and various others 
occasionally. 

By July most of the birds become silent and secretive, having 
begun the molt. Some species, before migrating South, wander 
from their breeding localities, and species unfamiliar to a locality, 
like certain Southern herons, are noted as far north as New Eng- 
land or Nova Scotia. From mid-July and on, the flocking of 
certain species occurs preparatory to the migration, such as 
^wallows, Sparrows, Blackbirds, Bobolinks, Nighthawks. A few 
migrant warblers appear in August. 

The return migration of the shore-birds begins about the 
middle of July, and is at its height in August. The latter month 
is a good time to visit the sea-coast to study shore-birds, Terns, 
etc., and for yachting trips offshore among the ocean birds, such 

283 



A BIRD CALENDAR 

as Shearwaters, Petrels, Jaegers, and Phalaropes. Good localities 
to find the latter class are the shoals off the southeastern end of 
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, or off Cape Sable, Nova Scotia. They 
can often be baited up with fish-livers close to the vessel and be 
successfully photographed. 

AUTUMN 

Before autumn has really arrived, many of the smaller birds 
have left for the South. The migratory species are now harder 
to find and to identify, being largely silent and in dull, nondescript 
plumage. Yet for all that it is interesting to be afield and to keep 
tally on the migration, recording dates of first and last appearance 
of all species observed. If done in friendly rivalry with others, 
this is very interesting, and it is a joy to exercise in the cool air 
amid the glories of autumn colors. 

By the latter part of September, migratory ducks and grebes 
begin to appear on the various bodies of water, and during Octo- 
ber the duck migration is at its height. Late October and early 
November bring many Northern sea-birds along the coast, some 
of which occasionally stray into inland lakes. A trip to the sea- 
coast at this time among the hordes of wildfowl is a delight. The 
sea in an autumnal or wintry hurricane — what is grander! 

Autumn is the shooting season for wild game. If you shoot, 
be content with a few game morsels for the table, and disdain to 
be so low-minded, in these days of growing scarcity of game, as 
to glory in a big bag. Learn to enjoy the pursuit more than the 
killing, the live wild creature in all its natural glory more than the 
dead trophy. Try for wildfowl and big game photographs, and 
as much as possible, let the camera usurp in your heart the altar 
formerly consecrated to the gun. 



284 



INDEX 



Baldpate, 267 

Bittern, American, 260-1 

Least, 261 
Blackbird, Cow, 151 

Crow, 153-4 

Red-winged, 152-3 

Rusty, 155 

Swamp, 152-3 
Bluebill, 267 
Bluebird, 97, 245-8 
Blue Peter, 259 
Bobolink, 150-1 
Bob-white, 23-6 
Bufflehead, 267 
Bull-bat, 104 
Bunting, Cow. See Cowbird. 

Indigo. See Indigo-bird. 

Snow, 157, 163-4 
Butcher-bird, 197-8 
Buzzard, Turkey, 56 

Canary, Wild, 162, 223 

Canvasback, 267 

Cardinal, 157, 175 

Catbird, 230, 236-7 

Cedar-bird, 194-6 

Chat, Yellow-breasted, 209, 217, 222 

Chebec, 134-5 

Chewink, 157, 172-3 

Chickadee, 130, 165, 243-4 

Carolina, 244 

Hudsonian, 244 
Coot, American, 259 
Cowbird, 151-2, 202-5, 225 
Crane Blue 259 
Creeper, Black and White, 208, 213, 217 

Brown, 242, 245 
Crossbill, 157, 160 

American, 160 

Red, 160 

White-winged, 160-1 



Crow, American, 64, 139-43 
Cuckoo, Black-billed, 77-81 
Yellow-billed, 81 

Dabchick, 271 

Dove, Mourning, 32-3 

Duck, Black, 1, 2, 263-4 

Dusky, 1, 2, 263^ 

Greater Scaup, 267 

Lesser Scaup, 267 
Duck, Long-tailed, 267 

Ruddy, 267 

Summer, or Wood, 1, 2, 264-6 

Eagle, Bald, 53 

Golden, 54 
Egret, American, 263 

Finch, Pine. See Siskin. 

Purple, 157, 162, 194, 207 
Flicker, 74, 87-94 
Flycatcher, Acadian, 134 

Alder, 135-8 

Crested, 128-9 

Least, 134-5 

Olive-sided, 133 

Traill's, 135 

Yellow-bellied, 134 

Gadwall, 267 
Gallinule, Florida, 259 
Gnatcatcher, Blue-gray, 244 
Golden-eye, American, 267 
Goldfinch, American, 118, 157, 162- 
Goosander, 268 
Goose, Canada, 268-9 
Goshawk, American, 54-5 
Grackle, Bronzed, 153 

Purple, 153 
Grebe, Holboell's, 270-1 

Horned, 270-3 

Pied-billed, 270-1 



INDEX 



Grosbeak, Evening, 160 

Pine, 157, 159, 161-2 

Rose-breasted, 157, 173-4, 193 
Grouse, Ruffed, 13, 26-31, 54 

Pinnated, 32 
Gull, American Herring, 269 

Ring-billed, 269 

Hawk, American Rough-legged, 54 

American Sparrow, 53-4 

Broad-winged, 35-47, 88 

Cooper's, 36-7, 47, 51-2, 55, 88, 219 

Fish, 53 

Hen, 55 

Marsh, 53 

Pigeon, 53 

Red-shouldered, 48, 51, 63 

Red-tailed, 48-51, 54, 88 

Sharp-shinned, 51-2, 55, 222 

Sparrow, 53-4 
Hen, Heath, 32 

Marsh, 259 

Mud, 259 

Prairie, 32 
Heron, Black-crowned Night, 260 

Great Blue, 259-60 

Green, 261-3 

Little Blue, 263 

Yellow-crowned Night, 263 
High-hole, 87 
Hummingbird, Ruby-throated, 111-23 

Indigo-bird, 157, 174 

Jay, Blue, 144-6 
Junco, 165-7 

Kildeer, 253 
Kingbird, 124-8 
Kingfisher, Belted, 82-6 
Kinglet, Golden-crowned, 244-5 
Ruby-crowned, 244-5 

Lark, Horned, 146 

Prairie Horned, 147 

Shore, 146 
Longspur, Lapland, 164-5 
Loon, 270 

Mallard, 267 
Martin, Purple, 186-7 



Meadowlark, 147-8 

Western, 148 
Merganser, American, 268 

Hooded, 268 

Red-breasted, 268 
Mockingbird, 237-8 
Mud-hen, 259 

Nighthawk, 102^, 109-11 
Nuthatch, Red-breasted, 242 
White-breasted, 242-3 

Old Squaw, 267 
Oriole, Baltimore, 148-9 

Orchard, 149-50 
Osprey, American, 53 
Oven-bird, 89, 102, 208-9, 217, 227-8 
Owl, Barn, 68 

Barred, 58-63, 69, 75, 97 

Great Gray, 75 

Great Horned, 33, 58, 60-1, 69, 71-2 

Hoot, 4, 58 

Long-eared, 63-8 

Marsh, 68 

Richardson's, 75-6 

Saw-whet, 73-5 

Screech, 69-72 

Short-eared, 68 

Snowy, 75 

Partridge, 27 

Peabody-bird, 168 

Peter, Blue, 259 

Pewee, Wood, 129, 132-3 

Phoebe, 129-32, 244 

Pigeon, Passenger, 32 

Pintail, 71, 267 

Pipit, American, 229 

Plover, American Golden, 253 

Semi palmated, 253 

Upland, 253 

Quail. See Bob-white, 

Rail, Carolina. See Sora. 
Clapper, 259 
King, 259 
Little Black, 258-9 
Virginia, 256-7 
Yellow, 258-9 



INDEX 



Redhead, 267 
Redpoll, 157-9 

Redstart, 102, 207-9, 217, 225-6 
Reedbird, 151 
Ring-neck, 253 

Robin, American, 33, 97, 207, 245-9, 255 
Swamp, 172 



Sandpiper, Bartramian, 253 

Least, 253 

Semi-palmated, 253 

Solitary, 254 

Spotted, 253-5 
Sapsucker, Yellow-bellied, 94 
Scoter, American, 267 

Surf, 267 

White-winged, 267 
Shelldrake, 268 
Shrike, Northern, 197-8 

Loggerhead, 198 
Siskin, Pine, 157-8, 160 
Snipe, Wilson's, 22-3 
Snowbird, 165 
Snowflake, 163 
Sora, 256-7 
Sparrow, Chipping, 102, 166, 169, 171 

English, 165, 178-9 

Field, 166, 169 

Fox, 166 

Grasshopper, 168, 170 

Henslow's, 168 

Ipswich, 167 

Lincoln's, 166 

Savanna, 167, 170 

Seaside, 167 

Sharp-tailed, 167 

Song, 102, 165-6, 169 

Swamp, 166, 169 

Tree, 165-6 

Vesper, 167, 170 

White-crowned, 168 

White-throated, 168 
Swallow, Bank, 184-6 

Barn, 178-80 

Chimney, 187 

Cliff. SeeEave. 

Eave, 178, 181-2 

Rough-winged, 186 

Tree, 182-4 
Swift, Chimney, 187-90 



Tanager, Scarlet, 89, 106, 191-4 
Teal, Blue-winged, 267 

Green-winged, 267 
Tern, Black, 269 

Common, 269 
Thrasher, Brown, 230-6 
Thrush, Alice's, 245-7 

Bicknell's, 245-6 

Hermit, 245-7 

Louisiana Water, 210, 217, 220-1 

Olive-backed, 245-7 

Water, 209 

Wilson's, 245-7, 249 

Wood, 102, 194, 245, 247, 249-50 
Titlark, 229 
Titmice, 243 
Towhee, 172-3 
Turkey, Wild, 32 

Veery, 102, 245-7, 249 
Vireo, Blue-headed, 198-200 

Red-eyed, 89, 199, 201-5 

Solitary, 198-200 

Warbling, 200-1 

White-eyed, 201 

Yellow-throated, 200 
Vulture, Turkey, 56 

Warbler, Bay-breasted, 207-8, 214 

Black and White, 208, 213, 217, 226-7 

Blackburnian, 34, 207-8 

Blackpoll, 213-4 

Black-throated Blue, 208, 217, 219-20 

Black-throated Green, 207-9, 215, 217, 

221-2 
Blue-winged, or Blue-winged Yellow, 

213, 217 
Caerulean, 214 
Canadian, 209, 212, 217 
Cape May, 207 

Chestnut-sided, 135, 209, 217, 224-5 
Connecticut, 213 
Golden-winged, 212, 217 
Hooded, 214, 217 
Kentucky, 214, 217 
Magnolia, 207 
Mourning, 213 
Myrtle, 207-9, 214-5 
Nashville, 210, 217-9 
Parula, 207, 209, 217, 223 



in 



INDEX 



Warbler, Pine, 213, 215, 217 

Prairie, 213 

Tennessee, 212 

Wilson's, 209 

Worm- eating, 211-2 

Yellow, 207, 209, 213, 217, 223-4 

Yellow-Palm, 212, 215 

Yellow-Redpoll, 212, 215 

Yellow-throated, 214 
Water Witch, 272 
Waxwing, Bohemian, 194 

Cedar, 194 
Whippoorwill, 102-9 
Whistler, 267 

Woodcock, American, 13-22 
Woodpecker, American Three-toed, 96 



Woodpecker, Arctic Three-toed, 87, 96 

Downy, 94, 96-9 

Golden-winged, 87-94 

Hairy, 94, 96-100 

Pileated, 87, 95-6, 99 

Red-headed, 88, 94-5 
Wren, Carolina, 240 

House, 238-9 

Long-billed Marsh, 240-1 

Short-billed Marsh, 240-1 

Winter, 240 

Yellow-hammer, 87 

Yellow-legs, Greater, or Winter, 253 

Lesser, or Summer, 253 
Yellow-throat, Northern, 209, 217, 228-9 



IV 



Set up, electrotyped, printed and bound at 

THE OUTING PRESS 

Deposit, Nezv York 



35 1908 



